THE ESSENTIALS 
OF CHARACTER 

~~" V ARD O. SIS SON 



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THE 

ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

A PRACTICAL STUDY 

OF 

THE AIM OF MORAL EDUCATION 



BY 
EDWARD O. SISSON, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1910 

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UXOR! CARISSIMAE FILIOLAEQUE 



PREFACE 

Earnest men and women everywhere are deeply con- 
cerned in the development of character in the young, and 
many of them, especially parents and teachers, are actively 
engaged in moral training. This book has been written 
in the belief that a clear comprehension of what really 
makes up human character would be one of the first and 
best aids to the actual worker. The whole plan and style 
of the work, including the selection of material, — and 
the omission of many things, — have been determined 
by this practical aim. This statement is not meant as 
an excuse for inaccuracy or fallacies, which I have en- 
deavored scrupulously to avoid. 

The ruling idea in my own mind throughout, and I hope 
in the book, is what may be called the dynamic and or- 
ganic nature of character: that character springs from 
native impulses and tendencies in the child, which are 
full of power, of push and thrust, and make themselves 
felt ; out of these original tendencies, by organization and 
coordination, and by enlightenment, character arises, 
through gradual and often imperceptible processes. 
Moral education, then, must always strive to make con- 
nection with these sources of power by directing the im- 
pulses of nature into the service of human ideals. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 



On the other hand, I have tried to avoid the error of 
belittling the intellectual element in character: mere 
knowledge is doubtless impotent enough for moral ends, 
but ideas united with emotional warmth and volitional 
power become ideals that dominate life, and the intel- 
lectual content is as essential to the ideal as the emo- 
tional warmth, for the ideal must contain the particular 
knowledge fitted to stir the heart and guide the conduct in 
the right direction. 

Moral education is generally recognized to be the most 
important of all educational questions, as well as the most 
complex and difficult. The writer earnestly hopes that 
this little book may prove a modest help in the practical 
solution of the problem. It need hardly be added that 
criticism and suggestion will be received with sincere 
gratitude. 

January, 1910. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

Introduction i 



CHAPTER I 

Native Tendencies 5 

Bodily activity. Sense-hunger and curiosity. Sug- 
gestibility. Tastes and appreciation. Self-assertion. 
Love. Joy. Fear. The growing-up impulse. Love of 
approbation. 

CHAPTER II 
The Treatment of Native Tendencies .... 34 

CHAPTER III 
Disposition 44 

Cheerfulness. Kindness. Disposition and habit. 

CHAPTER IV 

Habits 60 

The formation of habits. Obedience. Industry. 
Thoughtfulness. Truthfulness. Bad habits. 

CHAPTER V 
Tastes 94 

Wholesome and inexpensive tastes. Food. Bodily 
activity. Love of beauty. Good reading. Dangers in 
aesthetic education. 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 

PAGE 

The Personal Ideal 113 

The bodily ideal. The intellectual ideal. The ideal of 
honor. The workman's pride. Dangers of the personal 
ideal. Modesty. 

CHAPTER VII 
Conscience 124 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Social Ideal 132 

Basic truths of human life. Social intelligence. Love 
of humankind. Courtesy. 

CHAPTER IX 

Strength of Character 153 

Sources of strength. Virtues of strength. 

CHAPTER X 

Religion 170 

Religion of the essence of character. Religious ele- 
ments. The virtues of religion. 

CHAPTER XI 

Notes on the Cultivation of Character . . .182 
The force of contagion. The parents' power. Physical 
health. The school. Self-education. 

Suggested Readings 203 

Index . . . • • 211 



THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 



THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 



A PRACTICAL STUDY OF THE AIM OF 
MORAL EDUCATION 

INTRODUCTION 

Good is good and bad is bad, and nowhere is the differ- 
ence between good and bad so wide and so fateful as in 
human character. For character makes destiny in the 
individual and in the race. As a child grows into youth 
and maturity, all well-disposed persons are interested in 
how he will ' turn out' ; and the phrase reveals two sali- 
ent facts about the prevalent thought concerning the 
genesis of character : first, a certain vagueness as to just 
what is good and bad in it; and second, the feeling that 
whether it proves to be good or bad is much a matter of 
chance. Now a believer in education must needs deny 
the power of luck, and must pin his faith to the proposi- 
tion that character develops, like all other growing things, 
in accordance with inviolable laws : and that if we could 
know these laws, and act always in accordance with them, 
we should be able, — not to make what we please out of 
any child, — but to make of every child the best that he 
is capable of becoming. Even after we admit that de- 
velopment is governed by law, we still must see that in the 



2 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

case of a human being the laws are infinitely complex and 
as yet but little understood, and that both the human soul 
itself and the world that forms its environment are mani- 
fold and intricate almost beyond our conception. Even 
so, we dare not yield to despair, but must resolutely set 
ourselves to learn all we can in whatsoever way about 
the child and the laws of its development, and to turn 
this knowledge to good use in the cultivation of the best 
elements that spring in his nature. 

Human beings differ from each other indefinitely, and 
the variations run back in many cases to childhood, and 
probably have their roots largely in original endowment. 
No training that ignores these individual differences 
between children will be very successful. But, on the 
other hand, there are not a few qualities that we expect in 
every normal human being, and the importance of these 
things is immense : the very fact that we require them of 
all shows their peculiar value : and the fact that all must 
have them, and not merely a few chosen ones, multiplies 
their significance in our common life. So much has been 
said in recent years, especially since Rousseau, about the 
differences between individuals, that there has been 
danger of our losing sight of the truth that common hu- 
manity and the qualities and character that we can all 
attain are more important than any peculiar gifts that 
are bestowed only upon the chosen few. Every child has 
in him the springs and impulses of honor, of truthfulness, 
of love, and of all needed virtues : it is far more impor- 
tant to recognize and bring to perfection these universals 



INTRODUCTION 3 

than it is to discover and cultivate the occasional talent 
for music or art or athletic prowess or oratory, — valuable 
as these are. Now the most important of these universals 
of human nature have been summed up in common 
thought and parlance in the word character ; for character 
means the total of the qualities that make a real man or 
woman : a person without character is so much less than 
man: and a man of character is a man in the fullest 
sense. A clear and definite knowledge of the most im- 
portant at least of the qualities that make up character 
is necessary to the educator, by which we mean the parent 
first, then the teacher, and last, but not least, every one 
else who influences the growth and development of any 
child or youth, — and this last evidently takes in every- 
body. 

Moreover, the educator may always safely insist upon 
the qualities that belong to character in this sense ; but 
respecting the peculiar gifts of each individual, he must, 
as it were, wait upon nature and be guided by the revela- 
tion she makes. It is risky for a father to decide that his 
son shall be a physician or a man of business except as the 
son's own development gives the signs of fitness for the 
calling : but the parent must needs resolve that his child 
shall grow up into honesty, industry, courage, and the 
other indispensable elements of character. 

The question before us then, however difficult it may 
be to answer, is easily put : What qualities must be found 
in every human being to fit him for a happy and useful 
life, as an individual and as a member of society ; in the 



4 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

family, the social circle, the church ; as a citizen and as a 
worker ; and in the hidden reality of his own inner life ? 
The answer to this great question will portray the general 
aim of education ; every one who interests himself in the 
development of a child should rightly think first of this 
universal aim, and afterwards of the peculiar gifts and 
individual possibilities of the child concerned. 



CHAPTER I 

Native Tendencies 

The child, like any other organism, grows from within, 
and thrives only when his natural tendencies are given 
suitable room and encouragement. Whoever wishes to 
succeed in influencing the development of the child must 
first seek to know these natural tendencies, and then find 
means for modifying them in accordance with his edu- 
cational aim. The recognition of these natural tendencies 
as the ultimate basis of all education is the central idea 
of what we sometimes call the New Education, although 
the idea was not unknown even as far back as the time of 
Plato, and of course has always dominated really good 
educational practice, whether the educator knew it or 
not. The Old Education, in the bad sense of the word, 
implies the attempt to thrust or foist upon the growing 
child experiences and characters that do not fit these 
natural impulses. Whatever we hope to fix in the char- 
acter of the educated person, we must find in rudimentary 
form in the child. Hence the problem of the formation 
of character must begin here, in a study of what we may 
call native reactions, or impulses and movements that 
arise in the child in advance of any training or teaching 
from without. 

5 



6 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

A certain by-gone philosophy — which certainly must 
have quite forgotten all about the real child — used to 
speak of the child's nature as a tabula rasa, or ' blank page, ' 
upon which experience and training might write what 
they pleased. As a matter of fact, the child's nature at 
birth, like that of a calf or a chick, is pretty well scribbled 
over by the experience of its ancestors. It is far from 
being blank, for as soon as the little organism comes into 
the world, it begins to do certain things and do them with 
much zeal and determination, as every one knows who 
knows real children. Only in very recent years has the 
profound importance of these early actions of the child 
been recognized, and a new science has arisen of Child 
Study , to observe and record these phenomena, and seek 
to discover their meaning and value for education. To 
the numerous works on this subject we refer those of our 
readers who desire full and technical information concern- 
ing the native tendencies of children ; we must be content 
here with mentioning out of the great number of these 
tendencies a few that are of special importance in the 
formation of the elements of character. 

i. First of all in time, at least, comes bodily activity. 
The healthy child from the beginning moves body and 
limbs frequently and vigorously. This tendency in- 
creases rapidly in the first few months, until soon the 
child is seldom still except when asleep, and this constant 
activity is likely to last for a good many years, — at least 
long enough to keep the primary teacher busy for some 
time after the child enters school. Now the mother and 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 7 

sometimes the teacher are very apt to lose patience with 
this motor activity, as the psychologist calls it, and they 
dub it plain restlessness, and sometimes ask the child 
querulously if he cannot sit still a minute. In simple 
truth he cannot ; or at best only on rare occasions, when 
weary or sated with activity. Indeed, when a child in 
the first two or three years of life inclines to stillness and 
quiescence, the chances of its living out the perils of in- 
fancy are small, for the restless activity of the little one 
is the best evidence of its vigor and vitality. Moreover, 
these restless and often apparently aimless motions are 
the indispensable basis of several parts of its development : 
first, its bodily growth and physical control depend upon 
them; out of the random and confused movements of 
early life, by a wonderful process of selection and habitua- 
tion, 1 arise the power to walk and run and jump, as well as 
the marvelous skill and versatility of the human hand, 
and all other forms of definite muscular control. Only 
through the ceaseless and eternally repeated movements 
of the infant and little child can the helplessness and con- 
fusion of early movements grow into the order and defi- 
niteness of adult control. 

Besides this, the very health and development of the 
body and its organs depend upon abundant movement 
and exercise of all its parts, — just what the " restless- 
ness" of the child supplies. The adult keeps in health 
by the activity of his daily occupation ; the child has no 
occupation except the activity itself ; and he has far more 
1 See Dewey, " Psychology/' Chapter on Physical Control. 



8 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

need of bodily activity than has the. adult, for he is in the 
period of most rapid growth and development, which 
doubles and trebles the need of exercise. These are but 
the simplest functions of the ceaseless motion of the child ; 
still another fundamental use is found in the contribution 
that motion makes to the operation of the senses, of which 
we shall speak further on. The most important point 
for us here, however, is the relation of child activity to one 
of the basic elements of character ; the habit of industry, 
with all that it means for success and happiness, springs 
directly from the restless activity of the child, as the plant 
springs from the seed. The tramp and the lazy man are 
persons in whom the precious shoot of activity has some- 
how been marred or broken beyond repair; the early 
activity has been wasted or repressed, and the vital habit 
that should have sprung from it is lost. These are the 
thoughts that may help us as parents and teachers to 
keep down the natural impatience and irritation that the 
unceasing and often annoying and even dangerous activity 
of the child stirs in us. It is nature's way of creating the 
physical strength and efficiency of manhood and woman- 
hood. 

This first great impulse of childhood dominates the 
whole early life of the child in the form of play ; but though 
activity is the mainspring of play, play itself actuates and 
educates every other impulse and element of the child's 
nature, and must be given the place of honor and prefer- 
ence in the early years as the fit and proper employment 
of the child ; in ideal development the inner consciousness 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 9 

of play would be continued into adult life, and only the 
external conditions would make the difference between 
play, the business of the child, and work, the business of 
the adult. It is a mere commonplace to say that the best 
worker is the one who retains the spontaneity, vigor, and 
enthusiastic interest of childhood play. 

2. Sense-hunger and Curiosity. Great is the child's 
impulse to work upon the world about him through his 
muscular powers; no less does he hunger, as it were, 
to take in the world through his senses. Touch, taste, 
sight, hearing, and other deeper-lying senses, and in 
a less degree, smell, are all awake and eager. Upon 
them the child tries whatever comes within his compass ; 
he is not content with sight, but wants to use hand and 
mouth also upon the object. Few of the native reactions, 
awkward and annoying as some of them are, are so ex- 
cessive and so dangerous as the irresistible impulse to 
thrust everything into the mouth, but there it is, filling 
the mother's days with anxiety lest pins or poison or 
choking should imperil the baby's life. This phenomenon 
of child life, with its incidents of dirt eating and thumb 
sucking, and lasting beyond liquid diet and teething, is 
enough to make us cautious about asserting that all the 
impulses of infancy have a use and justification ; we shall 
probably do well to conclude that some of them, like the 
appendix among our organs, are superfluous vestiges of a 
previous stage of evolution. 

The development of the senses under the stimulus of the 
sense-hunger is one of the most fascinating chapters of 



IO THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

child-study. Born deaf and almost blind, with little or no 
manifestation of smell, and probably inferior touch and 
organic senses, the little one swiftly gains use and control 
of the organs that are to reveal the world to him. Pecul- 
iarly interesting is the indissoluble union between the 
development of the senses and that muscular activity we 
have already discussed : the eye is the best example ; the 
new-born baby has no control over either head or eyeball, 
and cannot look at anything: hence, while the eye itself is 
perfect, the child does not properly see anything. Very 
soon the head begins to turn toward sounds or lights; 
then the eyes themselves gain the power to move in their 
sockets and converge, with proper accommodation and 
focus, upon a definite object; then the child truly sees 
for the first time. The marvelous delicacy, perfection, 
and swiftness of the movements of the eye that are es- 
sential to complete vision command our astonishment 
and reverence : these the child acquires in the first year 
of life; but, like so many other achievements, only by 
grace of the impulses to activity and to sense perception ; 
without these the eye would linger forever in the dull fish- 
vision of the new-born babe. 

Hardly less dependent upon muscular activity is the 
sense of touch : "Let me see that," with the child, means, 
Let me handle it, move my hands over it, rub it, 'heft' it, — 
and so forth. The educated touch that we hear of in 
textile experts, physicians, and others, resides probably 
as much in the muscles as in the sense organs themselves. 
Hearing is also, though to a much less extent, in partner- 



NATIVE TENDENCIES II 

ship with movement: posture and movements of the 
head help to determine direction and distance of sounds. 

Out of a union of sense impressions the child gains his 
ideas of things : the sight of an orange creates the desire 
to touch and taste and smell it : and these impressions 
go to make up the orange as the child knows it. So the 
sense-hunger leads the child mind forward from sensa- 
tions to perceptions of things, and from things, related to 
each other, and experienced both actively and sensorially 
by him, he constructs his world. 

Now this sense-hunger of early childhood, while it does 
not pass away entirely, becomes year by year less con- 
spicuous, and gives place to its natural successor, which 
we sometimes call curiosity ; this name we adopt with the 
proviso that it is not to carry any of its usual disappro- 
bation. Just as the little child wants to see, touch, taste, 
smell, everything that comes within his reach, because it 
is new to him, and, we may also add, because he needs the 
acquaintance he gets thereby : so the older child wants to 
know about all the new things that come his way. But it 
is not usually a matter of color or form or taste or smell ; 
it is more likely to be a more advanced inquiry : " What 
is it for?" "Where does it come from?" "How does 
it work ? " and a thousand such like, which none but the 
father or mother of a little lad or lass could begin to enu- 
merate. It is of course very easy to sit in a quiet room 
with no child in sight or hearing, and expand upon the 
beauty and power of this child impulse of questioning, and 
it is pretty hard always to live up to the idea when an 



12 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

actual flesh-and-blood child is pelting one with what's and 
why's and how's, without end, and often, to our compre- 
hension, without sense. But no matter how hard it is to 
live up to the truth, yet still it is true, that this harass- 
ing inquisitiveness is the only root out of which intelli- 
gence and mental power can grow, and the parent and 
teacher must needs pray for grace to treat it accord- 
ingly. 

The two impulses just discussed, of activity and curi- 
osity, combine in the constructive impulse, and in its close 
relation, the destructive impulse, both of them being 
conspicuous in every normal child. The destructive 
impulse usually, and the constructive often, constitute 
what the adult terms mischief. This is why the most 
vigorous and healthy children make the most mischief. 
The propensity of all children to meddle with what they 
ought not to touch is perfectly clear : what they ought not 
to touch is exactly the thing that by that very fact must 
stimulate their curiosity to the highest degree ; and it is 
much to be questioned if any of us really grow quite out of 
this stage. The child must needs be doing, and he must 
needs get new sense experience and later new knowledge; 
result, infallibly and irresistibly, — mischief. The ex- 
ceeding value of the constructive impulse needs no em- 
phasis ; it is the taproot of all the arts and crafts of the 
human race. It is one of the most difficult tasks of early 
training to restrain mischief and destruction within 
reasonable limits without unduly repressing the whole- 
some activity of the child. 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 13 

3. Suggestibility. One of the commonest fallacies re- 
garding children is the opinion that they are naturally 
disobedient ; as a matter of fact, the child has a natural 
tendency to do what he is told to do, — provided, of 
course, he is not too much attracted by something else 
and has not a positive aversion to the thing commanded. 
Also, provided the command is given by a person who is 
not obnoxious to him, and not in a way calculated to 
arouse his antagonism. A good many provisos, you will 
say ; yes, surely, and I should not like to warrant the list 
to be complete. But in spite of this, it is still true, that 
it is natural to a child to do what he is told to do, and, 
moreover, in actual life, children act in accordance with 
this, or, in other words, obey, far oftener than they dis- 
obey. The trouble is that one disobedience makes more 
trouble and so more impression upon our minds than a 
score of obediences. A disobedient child is one who 
disobeys, as his mother says, often; in strict numerical 
ratio, his disobediences would usually be few as compared 
with his obediences. Nothing here said is intended as an 
excuse for disobedience, nor for the weakness of discipline 
that tolerates it. 

Not only is it natural for a child to do what he is told to 
do ; strange as it may sound, he has a distinct tendency 
also to do what he is told not to do. And yet again, he 
has a distinct tendency to do what he sees done, or hears 
about, or whatever in any way comes into the range of 
his perception. All these tendencies, which are really 
summed up in the last sentence, constitute what is called 



14 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

suggestibility, or the tendency to repeat in one's own 
person any act the image of which enters the mind. The 
most clearly recognized form of this great tendency is, of 
course, imitation. 

It will be noted that while it is wrong to say that chil- 
dren are naturally disobedient, it is hardly safe to say that 
they are naturally obedient : for obedience is much more 
than an impulse, and it is not native, but acquired. 
Moreover, as we have seen, and as all wise parents and 
teachers know, the child is prone to do the very thing he 
is told not to do. Hence the danger of prohibitions in 
school and family discipline : telling boys not to make their 
snowballs hard nor put ice or stones in them may result 
in the very conduct that is forbidden. For the very idea 
of the act has a natural tendency to produce the act; 
in other words, the child is not naturally obedient, nor 
naturally disobedient, but is naturally suggestible. The 
practical inference is clear, and although it is not all of 
discipline, it is the foundation of it, — to present to the 
child's mind those actions that we wish him to perform ; 
the very picture of desirable acts and conduct in his 
mind is a force for good ; whether the picture is produced 
by words or by example, the result tends to follow ; and, 
per contra, to avoid as far as practicable presenting un- 
desirable acts, for the very image of evil deeds and bad 
conduct is in itself a source of danger, whether the image 
is produced by bad advice or bad example. Few truths 
are so profoundly important in education as this, and yet 
most parents and not a few teachers fail to realize its 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 1 5 

significance ; the general public in their attitude toward 
children seem to heed it not at all. 

The child's eyes and ears then are open and hungry 
for deeds and conduct that he may copy : "I can do that/' 
"See me do that/' "Let me try that/' are frequent enough 
on the lips of children, but they are only a corporal's 
guard of the army of the imitative impulses that swarm in 
child-consciousness. Nor could it well be otherwise : the 
baby has no arts nor accomplishments, and must learn 
all before it can become grown up. The simplest pro- 
cesses of daily life, eating, dressing, manners, all must be 
learned, and mainly through this suggestibility. The 
most complex of all the organic arts, speech, would never 
be acquired but for the dominating impulse that comes 
at the proper time and leads the child to prattle and 
chatter, over and over again, every word and sound he 
hears. Professor James has called the child a behaving 
organism : 1 it would be as correct to say that he is an 
imitating machine, for imitation really precedes behaving, 
and furnishes the material for it. 2 

To say that the child is suggestible, then, means that he 
is open to contagion in mind as well as in body, that he 
' takes' habits and manners and character very much as 
he takes measles or whooping cough, from any one who 
has them. Education must provide quarantine against 
bad moral infections, as departments of health do against 

1 See that golden book for teacher and parent, "Talks to Teachers on 
Psychology and to Students on some of Life's Ideals." 

2 For full and expert discussion of this topic see "Suggestion in Educa- 
tion," by M. W. Keatinge. 



1 6 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

bodily contagions ; and, what is even more important, it 
must infect the child, through right example and precept, 
and noble environment, with good ideals and strong 
character. 

4. Tastes and ^Esthetic Appreciation. What children 
like and dislike is a very broad field, and overlaps on some 
or all of the other natural tendencies we are considering : 
let us note, however, two parts of the field that seem to be 
of peculiar importance. First, the child has a natural 
taste for wholesome foods. What, says the mother, are 
candy, and dirt, and soap, and pins, wholesome food? 
And we must admit, of course, that these are but a few 
samples of the endless list of noxious and repugnant things 
that the little child takes to with avidity. But here, 
again, as in the case of suggestibility, the child finds no 
trouble in combining contrary qualities. He does (though 
fortunately not with equal propensity) both what he is 
told to do, and what he is told not to do. Likewise, 
although we must admit that he likes many contraband 
articles, it is true that he also likes his milk and bread and 
rice, and plenty of other good nourishing foods in their 
season. Moreover, the taste for dirt and pin will wear 
itself out in the course of nature, if happily the little om- 
nivore survives the perils of choking and poison, as he 
usually does; but the taste for good honest food, how- 
ever plain, never wears out, at least in the course of 
nature. It is sometimes driven out, and that brings us 
to the practical lesson. The old-fashioned mother may 
be wrong in thinking sweets unwholesome for children's 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 1 7 

stomachs, but even so, her practice was right, for the 
taste for sweets is very bad when it usurps the place of 
authority in fixing the child's diet. There are children 
who reach school age without knowing the taste of cake 
and candy, and who consequently devour plain bread 
with zest ; and there are other children whose feeble appe- 
tites must be tempted with coffee and spiced viands. 
The normal and healthy child has a native tendency that 
may enable him as a grown man to eat bread and butter 
with more delight than most people find in a dinner at 
Delmonico's. With him, good digestion does wait on 
appetite, and health on both. 

And what as to aesthetic appreciation? Comenius 
held that infancy is the time in which all branches of 
learning and culture should begin; and the capacity to 
rejoice in beauty of every form is no exception. Before 
the child can articulate a single word, he shows delight in 
bright colors and flowers ; almost, and in some cases quite 
as soon, he manifests pleasure in musical sound. He 
stretches out his tiny hand toward moon and stars and 
bright water, not, as is sometimes inferred, to grasp them, 
but in natural utterance of the joy he feels. Who has not 
seen a pair of boys, not yet in their teens, dawdling along 
the homeward road with their hands full of bright and 
variegated flowers? They gathered them as naturally 
and unconsciously as the rain falls; five, or even two 
years hence, it is safe to predict that the same lads will be 
indifferent or scornful of flowers and of a host of other 
forms of beauty that charmed their childish eyes; and 



l8 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

too often, once grown to manhood, the cares of this world 
have sadly choked the capacity to glow and thrill with 
the vision of the rainbow and the rose. Boys must be 
boys, and we must all agree that a boy in his teens had 
better like flowers too little than too much, for he is in the 
period of some indispensable natural tendencies that have 
not much concord with the gentler aesthetic feelings. 
But the grown man is to renew and embody all the best 
that springs in every period of immaturity, and the love 
of beauty is one of these. Education, then, must not 
neglect the native springs of aesthetic appreciation that 
abound in the soul of the child. Of the cultivation of 
these tastes more will be said in a later chapter. 

5. Self-assertion. "The baby new to earth and sky" 
may not know that "this is I" — but he knows how to 
make all the rest of the world know it ; and his own little 
intelligence seems early to wake to the idea. Under the 
head of self-assertion we must include a numerous and 
varied group of reactions that mingle in complicated 
relations with all the other classes of tendencies. Not 
seldom to the young mother or the inexperienced teacher 
it seems as if the self-impulses of the child have driven 
out all the rest and founded a complete tyranny over child 
and all about him. 

The first sense in which we speak of self-assertion is the 
mere vim and resolution with which any or all of the 
child's natural reactions utter themselves, especially when 
obstacles get in the path of his impulses. It is this push 
and thrust of the child's impulses that cause our ex- 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 1 9 

clamations that "He has a will of his own!" and the 
mother's distressed and despairing "I can do nothing with 
him," or "Did you ever see such willfulness?" and the 
like. The next point is the child's disregard for the in- 
terests and feelings of others, and for the value and safety 
of the furniture or whatever else comes in his path. 
People and animals are ruthlessly bruised and maltreated, 
polished tables marred beyond the power of varnish to 
restore, and jewelry and bric-a-brac reduced to fragments. 
Then there are a number of special and extremely impor- 
tant responses to opposition: the little would-be auto- 
crat strikes, scratches, bites, fights, without any rules of 
the game except to gain his point : when other measures 
fail, he stiffens his little frame and even holds his breath, 
until the mother or nurse capitulates in mere terror. 

Of course the saving respect in all this, so far as it con- 
cerns early childhood, is that the child is not really willful, 
but only will-full, and this latter he must be, if he is ever 
to be a real bone-and-sinew man ; nor is his destruction 
of the furniture and ornaments vandalism, but only happy 
unawareness of the nature and value of what he smashes ; 
and, above all, his fierce attacks upon his mother and 
nurse are not cruelty, but only defect and ignorance : 
ignorance of the feelings of any one but himself, and de- 
fect of the altruism that comes naturally with a little more 
growth, — indeed, is even now building in his soul in un- 
mistakable charm. Certainly we may well believe that 
part of the pugnacity and fury that mark some of the 
1 spells' of some children might well be spared: but 



20 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

education always has to concern itself partly with ' letting 
the ape and tiger die/ and the little child has its full share 
of the lower inheritance of the race. The comforting fact 
concerning these self-asserting impulses is that they are 
common to all normal children, varying, of course, in form 
and force ; the young mother's shuddering fear that her 
baby is destined to become a monster of violence and 
cruelty is quite unfounded. But only devoted love, 
coupled with wisdom and resolution, can solve the per- 
plexing problems arising from these stormy elements in 
the child. We no longer believe in the old plan of c break- 
ing the will ' ; yet we dare not go to the other extreme of 
indulging the blind and violent impulses of the little 
ignorant and undisciplined scion of humanity. For- 
tunately there are some tendencies yet to catalogue that 
give light and aid in the control and cultivation of these. 

Furthermore, from the crude impulses of self-assertion, 
disciplined and organized through experience and training, 
arise the indispensable virtues of self-respect and rational 
confidence in one's own powers. These are supporting 
and preservative as well as energizing elements in char- 
acter, and the dynamic force demanded in them can come 
from no other source than the native impulses ; the energy 
which without direction is destructive becomes under 
rational control beneficent and constructive. Just as 
self-assertion constantly reenforces all the impulsions of 
the child, so these qualities give permanent strength to 
character and vigor to conduct. 

6. Love. Just as natural and spontaneous as the rest 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 21 

of the impulses is the impulse to love. The love that 
springs in the soul of the child is destined to cover a mul- 
titude of sins in that it is the supreme influence in the 
mitigation and control of all the violent and dangerous 
elements in his make-up. The existence of this tendency- 
is powerfully impressed upon all who look with seeing eyes 
upon the outer manifestations of the child's life. It is 
hard to say just when affection begins, but by the age of a 
year and a half it has become conspicuous : the wealth 
and variety of the baby's expressions of affection are 
wonderful: naturally the mother is usually the prime 
favorite, and upon her are lavished the ardent gaze of the 
eyes, tender tones of the voice, and fervid caresses. Even 
at this tender age, absence, if not too protracted, does 
make the heart grow fonder, and the delight of the child 
when the mother reappears is a thing to conjure tears and 
smiles. 

Besides the love bestowed by the child upon its real and 
actual kin and companions, it has the capacity for a re- 
markable prophetic or symbolic emotion, which is mani- 
fested upon the slightest opportunity, — the love of dolls : 
a baby just over eighteen months old, who had seen and 
handled a doll with the greatest delight, rolled up her 
little blanket, probably more than half accidentally, into 
something the form of the beloved rag doll, and began with 
a sort of surprised delight to pat and caress the almost 
shapeless bundle; so near to each other do humor and 
profound significance often lie in this life of ours. Her- 
bert Spencer complains in his " Education/' that for the 



22 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

one occupation that nine tenths of all people must follow, 
that is, for parenthood, education provides no prepara- 
tion ; Nature, at least, has not been so delinquent. 

We cannot pass from this subject without emphasizing 
the greatness and power of the impulse of love in the 
child. Bad things have a way of making more noise in 
the world than good, as any morning paper will abun- 
dantly and often disgustingly demonstrate. So we are 
apt to miscalculate the proportion of the various con- 
stituents of child nature. Love is quiet and soothing : 
pugnacity is boisterous, and self-will is exasperating; 
love is grateful and entertaining, curiosity is annoying 
and tedious. So we fall into the belief, or at least the 
habit of asserting, that children are naturally willful, in- 
quisitive, meddlesome, mischievous, — and seldom dwell 
on the far more important truth that they are eminently 
loving. The child will even turn from its most passionate 
rebellion with a caress for the parent who is punishing it : 
so powerfully does the impulsion of love spring in the heart 
of infancy. It is not well for us to give the evil a pre- 
ferred place in our thought; spiritual progress depends 
upon our rather dwelling upon the good, so that its real 
place in life may expand by virtue of its predominance in 
our minds. The simple instinctive love of the child for 
parents, nurse, playmates, and friends is the root out of 
which grow all the altruistic elements that raise human 
character and conduct to its highest level. For so great 
a task it is well that nature has provided so deep-rooted 
and pervasive an impulse. 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 23 

Modern educational thought justly lays great stress 
upon the social impulse. The effective force of this im- 
pulse is that moderate form of love that we call affection 
or liking. There is also involved a special form of curi- 
osity of great strength, that causes a child to be intensely 
interested in other children of about his own age ; every 
one knows how even two babies in their carriages will be 
mutually fascinated at sight. As development proceeds, 
the original impulse is reenforced by the common life and 
interests of the child with those of the same age or stage 
of development. It is also widened to take in other ages, 
and deepened by affection, and thus becomes a mature 
social nature. 

7. Joy. Nothing is more characteristic of healthy 
childhood than happiness, and nothing is more condu- 
cive to perfect development. The child's countenance 
lends itself willingly to smiles and laughter : it is humor- 
ously suggestive that the same physiological condition 
that sours the face of the adult draws the baby's features 
into a counterfeit of a smile, for the doctor tells us that 
the first smiles of infancy are really the result of some 
slight disturbance in the small stomach. "Pleased with a 
rattle and tickled with a straw" would be contemptuous 
enough applied to an adult, but it expresses a beneficent 
truth concerning the child, — a truth for which mothers are 
heartily grateful, and which has a significance far beyond 
the moment both for mother and child. The physiologist 
tells us that pleasure is the natural accompaniment of 
healthy activity: growing pains, of which we used to 



24 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

hear so much, are probably a superstition, and growth 
painless, if not actually pleasure-producing. Certain it is 
that growth and the joy of life run parallel, and that any 
environment and regimen that darken the child's life 
also retard and even deform his development. So while 
there will needs be some tears and pain, partly through 
natural causes and partly for discipline, yet no education 
can hope to prosper unless in the main it conserves the 
natural light and cheer of childhood. How woefully 
some systems and methods have sinned against this law 
has been shown, possibly with some excess of portrayal, 
by Dickens, in the early chapters of " David Copperfield " 
and elsewhere. Other things being equal, — and there is 
much meat in that, — the better educational method is 
the one that makes the child happy. It must be ad- 
mitted that the pedagogy of our day, especially in the 
home, has shown a tendency to let this criterion override 
some other weighty considerations, and so kindness has 
lapsed into indulgence, instruction into amusement, and 
discipline into coddling ; this is the sort of treatment that 
revenges itself early and sharply. Yet the truth still re- 
mains, in spite of all misinterpretations. 

Manifestly a tendency to be happy and to welcome the 
objects and incidents of life somewhat as the child does 
is a quality worth retaining in maturity. With this in 
mind, one is tempted to declare that this last tendency is 
the most important of all we have discussed : we recall, 
however, that several of the others are pretty big with 
meaning, and decide that it is like the rest not merely 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 25 

important, but essential, inasmuch as without it no full 
and rich human character is possible. 

8. Fear. All the other impulses we have considered, 
while they come into conflict with each other occasionally 
and, as it were, accidentally, really tend to harmony and 
mutual stimulus and encouragement. They are all 
positive, and all grow into the very texture of the mature 
life, contributing directly to its fullness and perfection. 
We now come to a tendency which is the opposite of all 
this, — fear, which is the enemy of every other impulse, 
blocking its expression, and choking its freedom: and 
which is no less the enemy of fullness and freedom in the 
mature life. It is the great negating power in the organ- 
ism : in its milder forms it chills and discourages all other 
impulsions, and in its intenser forms it either paralyzes 
all activity, — as in the case of the " frozen" rabbit or 
squirrel, — or throws the organism into violent and often 
confused and aimless movement. Particularly is fear 
the fatal antagonist of joy ; joy is the natural accompani- 
ment and stimulus of healthy activity of every sort : fear 
checks the activity, and turns the inner sense of delight 
and exuberance into panic and misery. 

The use of fear in the economy of nature is of course 
the preservation of the organism from dangers ; the young 
of the lower animals are constantly guided by impulses 
of instinctive fear, and would never escape the perils that 
beset them without these safeguards. But the case is 
very different with the human infant : with it fear plays 
a far smaller part, and that part mostly a useless one. 



26 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

The little child may live day after day apparently without 
the experience of fear : his utter lack of restraint over his 
crying shows the contrast between him and the silent 
babies of forest and meadow; as Fiske has said, the 
cry of the human infant is a declaration of the sovereignty 
of his race. Even when fear does arise in the child, it is 
more often than not a vestigial and useless remnant from 
prehistoric periods, — as, for example, the terror of fur 
sometimes manifested by a child a few months old ; an 
impulse that harks back to the cave dwelling subhuman 
man, and is quite useless to the modern child. Then 
again the child will cling almost convulsively to the 
mother whose loving grasp is perfect safety; but he 
will walk off the steps or the unguarded porch to 
a perilous fall. He is likely to be more frightened 
at an innocent strange man than at a dangerous dog. 
And alas, for pins and needles, buttons, and poison, Nature 
has left him quite without the safeguard of fear. In fine, 
it is evident that fear is a decadent element in the child : 
it has little place in his inner life, and less use in his outer 
experience. 

And yet we must at once set over against this two 
points ; first, that the fears of the child that do arise are 
often terrible and overmastering almost beyond adult 
comprehension. So far as the infant is concerned, no one 
can doubt this who has witnessed the shriek and convul- 
sive shudder of the fur terror; as to the fears of later 
childhood we can read their terror still even in our own 
faded early memories. The clear lesson from this is the 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 27 

need for the most patient and tender consideration for 
the fears of small children. The frightened child is help- 
less in the grip of an ancestral terror, now quite empty and 
irrational, but to the child as real and horrible as ever; 
the task of the parent or elder is to soothe away the 
emotion and kindle the light of reason and so emancipate 
the little soul from the dread inheritance. Playing upon 
a child's fears, and, above all, creating new ones with 
stories of the bogeyman, are the very height of folly or 
wickedness. These forms of fear are to be eliminated by 
encouragement and enlightenment. 

But secondly, fear has its uses even in civilized human 
life : very early the baby can be taught to fear the hot 
stove, the fall from the steps, the sharp pin, and many of 
the other dangers of the environment into which its birth 
has brought it. These are the first steps of the long path 
from the panic fears of infancy to the fear of parents, and 
that "Fear of the Lord," which is the symbolic expression 
for the highest reaches of character. 

9. The Growing-up Impulse. We have next to discuss 
a tendency that is strongly marked in both childhood and 
youth, but which is not ordinarily described in works on 
psychology or child-study as a separate impulse or in- 
stinct. Possibly it may be merely a resultant of more 
elementary tendencies, especially suggestibility and self- 
assertion, but we incline to believe that it is distinct from 
either. At any rate, it is so exceedingly important an in- 
fluence upon development and education, that it deserves 
a place by itself here. This is the maturing or "growing- 



28 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

up" tendency or impulse. All young human beings want 
to be older : the little child wants to be boy or girl : the 
boy or girl longs to be a young man or woman, and the 
youth yearns to be a full-grown man. The lad in high 
school ardently desires the time for graduation and college 
to come; once in the freshman class he wants to be a 
senior. 

Now this naturally manifests itself most plainly in 
imitation, but imitation is not all of it, nor indeed its es- 
sence, but simply its most direct expression or channel. 
The growing-up impulse has a marked negative form, in 
that the child of almost any age looks down with more* or 
less contempt upon his juniors and all their affairs : two 
children met, one four and the other two years old ; the 
younger called the older "Baby," and the four-year-old 
was filled with indignation, and cried, "She called me 
Baby!" Moreover, the child wants not merely to be 
like some one else who is older, but to achieve his own 
older self, which is much more than imitation. 

Every parent and teacher is acquainted with the signs 
of this maturing impulse : one of the most familiar and 
amusing forms is the fondness of little girls for rigging 
out in their mothers' old skirts and tripping up and down 
making calls and serving afternoon tea. Boys affect the 
characters of manhood as they see them, — loud, masterful 
tones, long steps, swaggering gait, and, above all, smok- 
ing and even swearing. The manners of their younger 
playmates, on the other hand, are to be strictly avoided 
and cast off as signs of infancy. 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 29 

The educative value of this impulse needs no proof : 
every wise teacher knows how to say to a boy: "Your 
behavior would be excusable in a child of eight in the 
primary room, but it is quite unworthy of a boy of 
twelve." At every age of developing life, powerful appeal 
may be made to the instinctive yearning to be older, more 
mature, more grown-up : in school instruction and dis- 
cipline, and in home duties and conduct, this impulse is a 
constant source of stimulus and direction. Particularly 
does this impulse make for self-control in all its forms and 
range : the child perceives that older people are quieter, 
more orderly, less apt to disturb or annoy others, and so 
on through all the details of mature ways and manners. 
Then he may easily be brought to embody these desirable 
qualities in his ideal of his own maturer self, toward which 
the maturing impulse is moving him. 

Few impulses are more in need of enlightenment, for the 
child in all his periods is extremely susceptible to the common 
human fallacy of the conspicuous and external. The boy, 
for example, is prone to seize upon smoking and swearing 
as the true marks of a man and copy them with avidity ; 
this is the true reason for his peculiar weakness for these 
petty vices ; the best remedy is to imbue his mind, from 
the dawn of intelligence onward, with a truer view of what 
real manhood consists ; let him see these cheap imitations 
in their true light as at best mere externals, and often 
symptoms of weakness and defect, of something less than 
full manhood and ripeness of power and self-direction. 
Above all, let him perceive that any habit or manner that 



30 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

enslaves the will is quite incompatible with the freedom 
and independence of full-grown human nature. 

The greatest care should be taken not to check or dam- 
age this impulse of development: the child naturally 
takes himself and his affairs seriously, and it is right that 
he should do so ; let his elders then do the same ; never 
ridicule or repress his budding sense of worth and matur- 
ity, but rather meet him more than halfway, show re- 
spect and consideration for his ambitions and hopes, be 
eager to treat him as older than his years; don't talk 
down to him too much, but rather give much opportunity 
for him to stretch up toward the ideas and ideals you 
present to him. 

Finally, the maturing impulse is the great spring of 
self-education, and self-education is of course the truest 
and most important form of education, — indeed, in a cer- 
tain sense it is the only education worth the name, all 
other being rather mere training and drilling from without. 
It is the maturing impulse that can furnish power to keep 
the inner improvement activities of the child and youth 
moving out of school hours, and after school years, and 
carry him indefinitely onward in the upward climb of 
individual achievement. The full stature of intelligence, 
capacities, and will power is the goal of the best self- 
culture ; it is the star to which the youth must hitch his 
wagon, or rather toward which he must drive, and the 
maturing impulse is the vital force that makes the at- 
tachment and provides the motive power. 

10. The Love of Approbation. The fact that children 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 3 1 

are instinctively sensitive to praise and blame is universally 
recognized. It is not always so clearly perceived that 
Nature could hardly have devised a more effective means 
of education, and that the proper use of the impulse 
should be studied most earnestly and managed with the 
most scrupulous care. The tendency of the child to seek 
approval and shun blame from his elders arms the eye and 
voice of the parent and teacher with cogent force, and 
enables them to win countless "bloodless" victories in 
discipline and training. Through this tendency desired 
acts may be clothed with preference in the child's mind, 
and faults may be marked for elimination, and thus the 
formation of habit may be greatly influenced. In a later 
period of mental growth, ideals and principles may be 
reenforced or discouraged by the approval or condemna- 
tion of the educator. Finally, there may be developed 
in the young mind that desirable element of character 
which is referred to in the Declaration of Independence, 
"a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." 

This particular tendency is peculiarly subject to per- 
version and decay. It may serve false and foolish ad- 
mirations and qualities as well as good : it may entice the 
child away from the influence of the parent almost as 
easily as it may hold him under the parent's power. It 
is easily overstrained : we must not blame too seriously 
what may seem to the child a trivial fault or even an 
innocent deed, for by so doing we may open up a gulf 
between him and us that may chill and weaken his whole 
sense of our opinions and attitudes. The parent whose 



32 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

approval is still potent when the child has grown to ma- 
turity has achieved one of the most difficult and vital 
tasks in education. 

We have described briefly what we believe to be the 
leading tendencies of early childhood, with which, there- 
fore, education must begin. As the child grows out of 
infancy his reactions become more varied and complex, 
and soon outgrow the short and simple catalogue we have 
set down. The new forms are partly, perhaps mainly, 
developments from the simpler and earlier ones; ac- 
quisitiveness probably springs from self-assertion and 
curiosity, the clan or gang impulse of boyhood from 
affection and the social impulse, and so on. But new 
elements still spring periodically from the fruitful soil of 
the developing nature. One of the most distinct and 
most momentous of these is the impulse of sex, the first 
inklings of which are indeed lost in the obscure recollec- 
tions of childhood, but whose clear manifestation occurs 
later and marks what is called the epoch of puberty, 
when the sexual organs attain physiological completeness. 
Happily, much expert study is now being devoted to this 
vital subject by the physiologist, the psychologist, and 
the student of education. It does not come within the 
reach of our discussion at this point; in referring the 
reader to works on the subject, 1 we add one word of 

1 Some of the most available sources of information are : 

Hall : From Youth into Manhood, New York, 1909. 

Wilson : The American Boy and the Social Evil. Philadelphia, 1905. 

Sperry, Lyman B. : Confidential Talks with Young Men. 

Sperry : Confidential Talks with Young Women. 



NATIVE TENDENCIES 33 

caution: puberty and adolescence in the human being 
are spiritual more than physical. The way of the youth 
and the maid is often wonderful in its ethereal purity and 
elevating power : the first intersexual affection, laughed 
at as " puppy-love/' too often puts to shame the later 
passion of the maturer man. In this fact lie hope and 
safeguards; educational wisdom here as elsewhere con- 
sists not in attempting to crush natural impulses, but in 
nurturing the good into domination over the lower ele- 
ments, and achieving the harmonious coordination of 
the inner forces. 1 

Hall, G. Stanley : Aspects of Child Life (Ginn). Especially paper on 
"Curiosity and Interest," pp. 84-141. 

Valuable pamphlets and full information on this subject may be had 
free from the following societies : — 

The Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 9 East Forty-third St., 
New York, N. Y. 

The Chicago Society of Social Hygiene, 100 State St., Chicago. 

The Spokane Society of Social and Moral Hygiene, 207 Nichols Block, 
Spokane, Washington. 

1 See " The Genius of the American High School," Educational Review, 
December, 1909, pp. 47i~473> 477~478. 



CHAPTER II 

The Treatment of Native Tendencies 

In our survey of the native tendencies of the child we 
have not felt it necessary nor desirable to check the 
hopeful enthusiasm that arises from contemplation of the 
elements with which Nature has endowed the healthy 
and normal child. To avoid serious misunderstanding, 
however, we need here to explain what we mean by the 
proper regard for the impulses of the child, of whatever 
sort they may be. We certainly do not mean that the 
educator is to throw down the reins, and let the impulses 
of the child go where they will. He must be something 
more than an interested spectator or even a self-denying 
victim. What he must avoid is first ignorance of the 
profound meaning and value of the impulses, and second, 
impatience and irritation at the undeniable annoyance 
and exasperation that often result from them. But the 
child is to grow into a man or woman, and to that end 
must gradually and by gentle progressions put away 
childish things and acquire the intelligence, reason, and 
quiet self-control of the adult. This he will never do by 
himself, but only by the aid of his elders, — parents, 
teachers, and other associates. The impulses are indeed 

34 



THE TREATMENT OF NATIVE TENDENCIES 35 

the stuff out of which character is to grow ; but they are 
raw material, sometimes very raw indeed; education is 
in a sense a process of manufacture, and the final product 
is achieved only through many and profound changes. 
The educational vices in dealing with children and their 
native reactions are ignorance, heedlessness, impatience, 
frivolity, — and in some few cases, meddlesome interfer- 
ence with the hidden process of nature ; the virtues to set 
over against these are lively interest and intelligent study 
of the native impulses and their function, and loving, 
patient, resolute activity in their nurture and guidance. 
It is clear that educational duty will sometimes involve 
restraint, prohibition, and even coercion; an education 
without these would be fit only for a jellyfish. The 
child who is full and running over with muscular im- 
pulses has quietness and self-control to learn : the adult 
who cannot sit still is as pitiable as the child who through 
low vitality sits still too much. The wise parent will 
sometimes require and, if need be, compel the child to sit 
still, even much against its own desire. Likewise, the 
wise parent must sometimes check the child's flow of 
questions, — not in irritation or from impatience, but for 
a good reason, explained to the child if practicable, it 
being always understood that some good reasons cannot 
be explained to the child. The native tendencies are 
absolutely the only stuff out of which human character 
can grow ; but they are still only the raw material. They 
are to be neither crushed nor indulged, but cultivated; 
and their cultivation will inevitably demand inhibition 



36 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

and even repression as well as the richer process of stimu- 
lation and encouragement. 

The broadest general principle of education is to fix 
attention upon the good, both for its own sake and as the 
final means for conquering the bad. Overcome evil through 
good should be the constant maxim of parent and teacher. 
The Apostle's injunction applies to both educator and 
child, " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things 
are pure, ... if there be any virtue, and if there be any 
praise, think on these things." Our lives are inspired 
and molded not by what we must not do, but by what 
we positively set before us in purpose, plan, intention, 
aspiration, ambition, and, if we should climb so high, in 
our life purpose. Moreover, the nobler and finer the 
character and life, the less it is dominated by the evil to be 
shunned, and the more by the good to which it aspires. 

This great truth has led some to reject all negative 
and repressive means of training: chief of these is the 
brilliant Rousseau, who actually declares that we must 
never lay upon the child any command whatsoever ; and 
there is not a little pedagogy nowadays that follows his 
erratic lead. There is little danger of any mother or 
practical teacher swallowing Rousseau's absurd paradox ; 
the facts are too stubbornly against it. Rousseau knew 
nothing of real children, having shamelessly shirked his 
own duties in this regard, and we need not concern our- 
selves with his advice on this point. But there is a real 
danger to-day lest our enthusiasm for the sacredness and 



THE TREATMENT OF NATIVE TENDENCIES 37 

beauty of child-life and child-nature blind us to the im- 
perative need for a strong and resolute rein upon the ex- 
cessive operation of impulse, especially in early childhood, 
before the child has any real will or wisdom of his own. 

Leaving out of the question as of comparatively little 
importance the damage to breakable things within reach 
of the child's impulsive movements, and even the per- 
sonal injury he is apt to wreak on those about him, the 
truth remains that the educator must protect the child 
from himself in a spiritual sense; that is, the harmonious 
and ideal perfection of his nature must be guarded from 
the damage caused by excessive development of particular 
tendencies. This is particularly true of the more violent 
self-impulses, such as obstinacy, anger, pugnacity, violent 
seizure of the property of others. It is clear that un- 
bridled activity of these impulses will tend to give them 
injurious predominance, and choke the gentler impulses 
that should hold them in check, such as affection and 
social nature. There is a right and wrong even in the 
affairs of the little child, which is not abolished even by 
the child's own failure fully to comprehend them. They 
are to be revealed to him partly through the control and 
discipline and even punishment exercised by his elders 
upon him. 

As soon as the child is born, its native tendencies begin 
to come out in actions, and as soon as action begins, the 
tendencies begin to be modified, and education is under 
way. The great question in early education is, What are 
the influences that affect the development of the tend- 



38 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

encies, and how do they work? Every time an im- 
pulse utters itself in an act, if we can believe psychology 
and physiology, a trace is left on nerve and upon soul: if 
the result of the act is agreeable, the impulse is con- 
firmed and the act likely to be repeated; if the conse- 
quences are unpleasant, the impulse is discouraged and the 
act less likely to be repeated. This is a bald and crude 
statement of the law that underlies all education and 
regulates all teaching and training. Clearly, then, the 
simplest rule of education is to strive to encourage desir- 
able impulses and acts and discourage undesirable ones ; 
unfortunately, the law, like so many other wise generali- 
zations, leaves us with the real task still on our hands, to 
decide which are desirable impulses and how we can en- 
courage them. But still the law is worth something ; it 
would at least make plain the folly of parents laughing 
at the conceited and otherwise obnoxious pranks of 
spoiled children. Punishment, in its various forms, from 
gentle reproof to the infliction of severe pain, finds its 
justification in the necessity of inhibiting undesirable 
acts and so preventing the establishment of the evil in 
permanent form. 

But the stimulation or inhibition of spontaneous acts of 
the child is only part of education ; it is necessary also to 
reveal to the child conduct and manners that he would 
not be able to evolve from his own nature; this is the 
work of example, suggestion, and instruction. These all 
give him pictures or ideas of things to do ; and these ideas, 
in whatever form they come, appeal to his natural tend- 



THE TREATMENT OF NATIVE TENDENCIES 39 

ency of imitation or suggestibility. Of course, the par- 
ent and the teacher can never have the field to them- 
selves, for the child's eager mind takes in ideas from every 
available source, at home, in school, on the street ; from 
father and mother and teacher, but no less from the de- 
livery boy and, possibly most of all, from the other chil- 
dren on the playground. Hence the educator must again 
call upon the above-mentioned forces of stimulation for 
the good and inhibition for the bad as they appear in this 
crop of chance-sown suggestions. 

These are then the three fundamental educative pro- 
cesses, — the stimulation of good acts, the weeding out of 
the bad, and the suggestion of new desirable forms. The 
aim of perfection is to do all this with all vigilance, realiz- 
ing that the child is being educated whenever he is awake ; 
yet with such skill and delicacy and regard for child-nature 
as not to disturb his own happy activity nor hinder the 
delicate processes of nature; and finally, to awake the 
child as early as possible to take a hand in the work him- 
self ; for he will never be really educated unless he edu- 
cates himself. Yet this last, indispensable as it is, is one 
of the most delicate and hazardous tasks, for undue haste 
is likely to develop a prig, and too much delay may miss 
the step that leads to moral earnestness and autonomy of 
the will. Nevertheless, what is true of the physician is 
still more true of the educator, that his success lies in 
rendering his aid no longer necessary. 

We cannot too strongly urge upon parents and teachers, 
especially of young children, the indispensable necessity of 



40 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

promoting the child's activity by furnishing outlets for his 
impulses. The most positive results in development take 
place through free and successful activity in the child 
himself. Moreover, the tone of the child's life is warmed 
and heightened by his activity. The baby not yet two 
years old is quite inspired and delighted with the task of 
pulling off his unbuttoned clothes : he can easily take off 
his shoes and stockings, and can make a fair attempt at 
putting them on. Hard as it is for grown people to 
realize, these little deeds are the very breath of life to the 
powers and budding will of the little one : success in them 
means as much to him as the accomplishment of our most 
cherished aims does to us. They are the top of his am- 
bition, the tasks just in front of him, which he is burning 
to conquer. The awkward but eager motions are thrill- 
ing with educative nerve currents, and are the true exer- 
cises of the infant intelligence and will. Keep your hands 
off : let him grapple with the task and problem, helping 
only enough to avert discouragement and surrender. 
Bend your grown-up soul to rejoice with the child's little- 
great endeavors and achievements, and so be his guide and 
inspirer toward ever greater things. 

It is fortunate that the child's natural attitude toward 
new tasks is much the same as that of the unsophisticated 
youth who, when asked if he could play the violin, replied 
that he ' didn't know, had never tried, but guessed he 
could.' One of the fine arts of education is to feed this 
child-confidence with tasks hard enough to be interest- 
ing and progressive, but not so hard as to cause despair. 



THE TREATMENT OF NATIVE TENDENCIES 41 

Let the little one struggle a bit with his own wraps ; let 
him climb the steps with only a safeguarding touch of 
the parental hand : let the little girl early try her hand at 
simple household tasks, — while she still possesses a 
natural enthusiasm for them as new fields to conquer. 
That is a wise farmer-father who occasionally puts the 
reins into the hands of his seven-year-old son and lets 
him glow with the sense of driving the great horses, — 
the father simply standing by, ready to give aid if needed. 

All these native tendencies arise from the unconscious 
depths of the child's nature : he deserves neither praise for 
the good nor blame for what we may consider the bad in 
them. He is sometimes as much surprised and perplexed 
by them as are his parents, or possibly even more so, for 
they can see in his little tempests of passion the image of 
their own childhood. The native tendencies spring out of 
unconsciousness, unbidden, inevitable, and for the time 
irresistible. But the development of a human soul is a 
path from the dim, helpless, confused consciousness of the 
infant, with its utter lack of control over either body or 
mind, upward by imperceptible degrees, through ever 
growing clearness and order and ever increasing self- 
control and direction, to the ripe wisdom and steady will 
of full manhood or womanhood. This long road is beset 
with perils and difficulties, and yet also marked with many 
guideposts of experience; no individual has ever found 
his way up the path without abundant help from those 
who have gone farther on it. That help is education, in 



42 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

the large and true sense of the word; as Emerson 
says : — 

"Education should be as broad as man. Whatever 
elements are in him it should foster and demonstrate. If 
he be dexterous, his tuition should make it appear ; if he 
be capable of dividing men by the trenchant sword of his 
thought, education should unsheath and sharpen it ; if he 
is one to cement society by his all-reconciling affinities, 
oh ! hasten their action ! If he is jovial, if he is mercurial, 
if he is great-hearted, a cunning artificer, a strong com- 
mander, a potent ally, ingenious, useful, elegant, witty, 
prophet, diviner — society has need of all these." * 

The native tendencies are blind, confused, contra- 
dictory; character is intelligent, orderly, harmonious. 
Everywhere the development of character is the increase 
of understanding, system, adjustment, among impulses. 
The human soul, even in its early stages in the little child, 
is so complex, and the process of its development so 
largely hidden from our keenest discernment, that we may 
well shrink from the attempt to discuss or describe it; 
and yet for our purpose the attempt must be made, with 
full sense of the unavoidable imperfection of the result. 
In the succeeding chapters we shall offer for consideration 
a very plain and unpretentious analysis of the essentials 
of character, under the forms of Disposition, Habits, 
Tastes, the Personal Ideal, the Social Ideal, Strength of 
Character, and finally Religion. But no one can draw a 
hard and fast line between disposition and habits, nor 
1 Emerson, " Education " (Houghton, Mifflin and Co.), p. 10. 



THE TREATMENT OF NATIVE TENDENCIES 43 

between tastes and the personal ideal ; nor between any 
two of the third, fourth, and fifth elements. And the last 
two are really the resultant and consummation of all. 
Nevertheless, the analysis has a use in helping us to sur- 
vey the field of character. 1 

Again, we may say that disposition, habits, and tastes 
in general form early, and with little activity of conscious- 
ness ; but we must not forget that they are subject to 
modification, and even profound change, in later life. 
We must also say that the personal ideal develops most 
powerfully in boyhood and youth, and the social ideal in 
youth and early manhood : yet both of these run back 
into childhood and forward into mature life. A certain 
phase of the process becomes conspicuous at a certain 
stage ; but it began, at least in dim, half-conscious form, 
long before. And long after it has taken definite form, 
it still requires conservation lest it decay or atrophy. 

We need, then, to write alongside every page that even 
the best description in words would be but a meager hint 
of this most complex and mysterious process in the uni- 
verse : and, above all, that it must be interpreted in the 
light of patient and loving study of the living child. 

1 The reader will be interested in comparing the analysis of character 
here given with those of other writers : of special value is that in Scho- 
field's " Springs of Character," Chapters VIII and IX, and the analysis 
suggested by the general outline of President Hyde's excellent " Practical 
Ethics." 



CHAPTER III 

Disposition 

The deepest-lying and most pervasive part of character 
is disposition : it accompanies us everywhere, and shows 
itself in all we do. It is the attitude of the soul toward 
life, the way in which we accept our situation and our 
daily experiences. On the inner side it gives color and 
tone to our own conscious life : on the outer side it per- 
vades and modifies our conduct toward others and our 
reactions to events. A good disposition is indispensable 
to good character, though of course not all of character ; 
without it one cannot hope for perfection ; even with it 
one may fail through lack of higher elements. It is a 
sort of foundation layer. 

Disposition takes form so early that no one can say 
how much of it is innate or hereditary, and how much 
arises through experience and training ; but there is no 
reason to doubt that it is susceptible to the influence of 
early environment. Its profound importance impels the 
educator to a diligent search for the truth as to its culti- 
vation. No amount of pains and labor could be too high 
a price to pay for the secret of a good disposition and the 
means of assisting nature in its production. 

Good disposition shows itself in two forms that may be 

44 



DISPOSITION 45 

indicated by these questions concerning the possessor: 
First, regarding his own affairs and experiences is he 
cheerful, hopeful, reasonable, contented? Second, to- 
ward others is he kind, helpful, charitable, in judgment ? 
Cheerfulness and hope are the basis of a happy inner life ; 
kindness and unselfishness the basis of happy relations 
to one's fellows and of a useful life. 

i. Cheerfulness. < Disposition may be called the climate 
of the soul 1 the varying moods of the day and hour are 
the weather, and their general average or tendency con- 
stitutes the disposition. There would seem to be as much 
difference between dispositions as between the most di- 
verse climates, and we may fairly assume that the inner 
life of one man may be as different from that of another 
as the misty climate of the Grampian Hills is from the 
sunny skies of Italy. A psychic weather observer might 
compute the average cloudiness or sunshine of various 
souls, — some having ninety per cent clear days and 
others not ten. 

A happy disposition is the more important because 
it seems so largely independent of circumstances: the 
cheerful man is happy in spite of troubles ; the best good 
fortune fails to relieve the habitual gloom of the melan- 
choly man. Milton might have been thinking of dis- 
position when he wrote: "The mind is its own place, 
And of itself can make a Hell of Heaven, a Heaven of 
Hell." 

This first element in disposition, the inner cheer and 
sunshine of the soul, rarely gets its due in our esteem, for 



46 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

the very reason that it is internal and eludes perception 
from without. The man may do all his work well, may 
meet his obligations in business and social life, may bear 
a spotless reputation, and even perform great services, 
private and public, and yet through it all carry a sad or 
gloomy consciousness ; of that no outsider can have any 
full realization, nor indeed will the man himself usually 
understand fully what he is losing, for the simple reason 
that he has no standard by which to judge the difference 
between his own somber spirit and the sunny atmosphere 
of a normal life. 1 

Yet all the time this inner condition that affects the 
man's outer performance so slightly is actually making or 
marring the worth of his own life to him. The cheerful 
disposition doubles the brightness of joys, and puts the 
silver lining upon the clouds of sorrow ; it multiplies the 
value of every experience and makes every hour of life 
worth living. The man who has a cheerful soul is more 
fortunate than one who spends the summer in the Adiron- 
dacks and the winter in California : he carries his warmth 
and glow with him. 

This inner ministry is the chief service of the cheerful 
disposition, but it is not all. As happiness, from infancy 
on, flows naturally from health, so it is certain that there 
is a reflex, and that serenity and joy are positively 
hygienic and medicinal; ' laugh and grow fat' is not 

1 The finest treatment of this subject known to the writer is in a 
lecture, as yet unpublished by President William Lowe Bryan, on " The 
Education of the Disposition." 



DISPOSITION 47 

merely a jest, for the merry heart is good for digestion 
and circulation and assimilation, and especially for those 
mediators between body and soul, the nerves. The old 
physiologists were nearer the truth than they realized 
when they identified the elements of disposition with 
humors, the fluids of the bodily organism. Good humor 
cannot be put into a measuring glass, but it has a positive 
beneficence for the blood and is nature's best remedy for 
"bile" and spleen, either literal or figurative. 

Nor is this all : the disposition is, it is true, an inner 
state and therefore known in its fullness only to the soul 
that contains it: but there are chinks enough in the 
earthly tabernacle to let out a goodly share of the inner 
radiance, for the cheer and enlightenment of others. 
That is a beautiful prayer which asks for the light of God's 
countenance ; it is mainly fulfilled as things generally go, 
through the countenances of men and women. A man's 
value to society is by no means all subject to computation 
in terms of labor and effort and public service, good as 
these things are and praiseworthy; some of the highest 
service leaves no visible memorial, but consists in having 
appreciably brightened the atmosphere of social life in 
the home and store and street. Of such a man the homely 
proverb says, he is a good sight for sore eyes ! 

But disposition, being the basic health of the soul, does 
yet more: it clarifies and stimulates all activities. It 
aids clear thought, quick perception, prompt and resolute 
will, skillful and efficient work, — "Give me the man who 
sings at his work," says the philosopher of common life ; 



48 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

for not only is it good for him, and for me, who must work 
with him, but it is good for the work and the output. 
And how can one refrain from turning aside here to touch 
the other side of the question, — "Give me a work at 
which my heart can sing ! " may well be the prayer of 
every man; it will be well when our economic practice 
wakes fully to the truth that this is a far more important 
question in real effect than the increase of the product 
and the decrease of costs. The general value of human 
life can never be very high so long as vast numbers are 
bound to tasks that kill joy and deaden the capacity 
for it. 

To miss the joy is to miss all, says Stevenson ; there 
is no surer way to miss the joy than to miss a cheerful dis- 
position, — the very thing that redeemed Stevenson's 
own life and gave him the victory over disease and pain. 
A quiet force it is, often hardly recognized as a potent 
element in life, even by the owner himself; not to be 
gauged by any of the ordinary rules and measures of 
conduct and achievement; but underlying all character, 
affecting all activity, enhancing all conscious existence, 
worthy, therefore, to be greatly desired and ardently pur- 
sued in ourselves and in our children. 

It must be clear that the cheerfulness we have been 
praising is not mere mirth, certainly not levity nor reck- 
less abandon ; Aristotle was right in declaring virtue, of 
every sort, to be a mean between two extremes, and our 
present case is no exception. It is as great a defect to 
lack seriousness as to indulge in sadness; cheerfulness 



DISPOSITION 49 

paid for by frivolity is a poor bargain. The fool's para- 
dise is a mirthful place, for the nonce ; but its laughter is 
like the crackling of thorns under a pot, and is apt to die 
out suddenly and leave nothing but miserable ashes. 
Tiresome as the task may be to the superficial thinker, 
the study of life and character, as of other deep things, 
must always heed all of the injunctions upon the three 
successive gateways of the temple, — "Be bold," "Be 
very bold," "Be not too bold." In mechanics it takes at 
least two forces, and those opposing forces, to hold a body 
in equilibrium ; and in the spiritual world no truth ever 
stands by itself nor on one principle, but must be pro- 
tected from fallacy on both sides. So our exaltation of 
cheerfulness needs to be taken with the understanding 
that it is not the only virtue, and that other requisites of 
character will be found to push somewhat against it, not 
to thrust it out completely, but to guard it from excess, 
and preserve the poise and balance of the soul. And 
what is here said of this particular virtue applies to all ; 
we shall do well to hold in mind throughout the wise old 
Greek's doctrine of virtue as the happy mean between the 
two vicious extremes. 

Hopefulness is very close kin to cheerfulness, being the 
bright view of the future that links confidence in destiny 
with a certain assurance in one's own ability to aid in the 
desired result. Hopefulness is cheerfulness with forward 
look and stretched-out hand. All that is said in praise of 
cheerfulness is true of it, and it has an added practical 
value. The energetic element in hope probably rises in 



50 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

the impulses of activity and of self-assertion, and gives 
to the virtue its dynamic quality. 

In the cultivation of every virtue the first step is the 
conservation and nurture of the native tendency; the 
taproot of cheerfulness of disposition is the natural spring- 
ing joy of childhood ; that must be favored and guarded 
in every way. The capital crime of early training is the 
killing of happiness; nothing could atone for that loss. 
Education has always talked much of the necessity 
of sacrificing the present to a greater future good; but 
here is one place at least where present and future have 
the same interest. The joy that illuminates the days and 
hours of childhood also lays the best foundation for 
strength and wisdom and health to serve maturity and 
old age. Let us make the most of these harmonies be- 
tween the now and the future ; they are really far more 
fundamental than the conflicts. All day long the healthy 
child plays in unalloyed delight, and every happy moment 
is laying up store of future good. Then comes an im- 
pulse or desire that is dangerous or harmful, and parental 
foresight interferes, with grief and tears on the part of the 
child. But before the seconds hand has ticked once 
around its dial, the sky has cleared, the nursery rings with 
shouts of happy laughter, — and the deeper education is 
again at work. 

Make way, then, for child joy ; let the house and gar- 
den, and all who encompass the little one, conspire and 
labor to brighten every moment, for every bright moment 
adds fiber to the tissue of happy and healthy disposition. 



DISPOSITION 51 

Take a lesson from the mother cat rolling and scuffling 
with her delighted kittens: and then see how far the 
child, even of a year old, surpasses the lower creatures in 
his rich comprehension and exuberant joy in play. Even 
bodily comfort is worth working for ; let pain and annoy- 
ance be reduced to their lowest terms, and so the way be 
left free for higher positive pleasures. 

So deep are the roots of disposition that at best we 
begin too late, and should seize the first weeks of infancy 
for the starting of our culture. As years pass and the 
child matures, the general rule is still the same, to mul- 
tiply and magnify the happiness of the maturing life. If 
an early age shows success by the manifestation of the 
desired disposition, the educator must not relax his vigi- 
lance, for the present condition carries no absolute guar- 
antee for the future. If the outcome is up to date less 
satisfactory, and the best opportunities are felt to be 
behind us, we must still, for so great an end, labor to wrest 
a measure of success from the poorer opportunities yet to 
come. 

And now for the other side of the shield, — which we 
know from the beginning must be suryeved. We have 
been very bold in announcing the maxim, " Magnify the 
joy of the child" ; nor is one iota of that to be abated. 
Yet that rule alone would defeat its own end, both for the 
present and the future, and result in spoiled and pampered 
children, and undisciplined and world-weary adults. Yet 
more, it must be said that while our fathers, or at least 
our grandfathers, erred toward harshness, we err to-day 



52 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

toward indulgence. So let us look the limitations in the 
face. 

And first, while animals live chiefly in the moment, and 
by the moment, human life always exists through sum- 
mation and consummation. So the exuberant joy of 
the moment is always to be computed in an average with 
what goes before and what follows. Rousseau fulmi- 
nates against the schoolmaster who sacrifices the child's 
natural happiness to a hypothetical future welfare ; but it 
is no better to jeopardize the rich and abundant years of 
manhood to the unregulated whims of child impulse. 
Let us write, then, that pleasures which injure body or 
mind, which sap the forces of digestion or of intellect, or 
vitiate the tastes, are no part of our duty toward the joy 
of childhood. Two things are clear : first, the child pays, 
and pays dearly, for these indulgences. The coffee that 
he gets by crying for it takes heavy toll from the delicate 
stomach and nerves, to be exacted soon and late in in- 
digestion and nervousness. The late hours in which the 
boy or girl is indulged mark the cheek with chalk where it 
should be tinged with red blood, and by that token reveal 
the deduction from vigor, bodily exhilaration, and mental 
power. That the parent pays, too, needs no proof ; but 
we will not distress ourselves over that, since it is no more 
than justice. 

Moreover, entertainment soon blunts the edge of en- 
joyment ; the secret of child joy is not in being amused, 
but in needing no amusement, — and it is strange how the 
same truth fits grown-up life ! Even a child's life con- 



DISPOSITION 53 

sisteth not in the abundance of the things he hath, nor in 
the multiplicity of his means of amusement. The road 
to life is not through being amused, but in amusing one's 
self ; not in being diverted or entertained, but in having 
something to do that is worth doing, and in doing it. 
The whole truth is found in graphic form in "The Story 
of a Sand Pile/' or, better still, in a real sand pile, with 
real children playing in it. Renunciation and abstinence 
will be recognized ; not for their own sake, nor even for the 
added zest they give to pleasure when permitted, but 
because they are an integral part of the scheme of life, 
and contribute to its power and richness in manifold 
ways. The mother recognizes the truth when she puts 
a toy away for a week, so that the child's joy in it shall 
be made as good as new. 

If the world were all playground and picnic, cheer- 
fulness might be sufficiently developed by stimulating 
and cherishing the natural joys of childhood. But the 
good humor that works only when all goes well will 
not serve the turn, even in childhood. A more robust 
cheerfulness must be developed, one that can smile or at 
least refuse to cry under the test of pain, loss, misadven- 
ture, disappointment. Opportunity for the culture of 
this virtue begins early, before speech or reason have made 
much progress; the little man must be shown how to 
resist tears and pouts, and to pluck up cheer when his small 
affairs, great to him, go awry. The how of this teaching 
is hard to tell, but it can be done ; until language opens 
the way for clearer communication, the mother's tones 



54 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

and manner must convey the proper comfort and encour- 
agement, and waken the spirit of endurance and resist- 
ance in the little heart. The right method, as usual, lies 
in an invisible line of action, found only by grace of tact 
and sympathetic understanding, between too much com- 
fort and too little stimulus on the one hand, which is 
coddling, and too little comfort and too much stimulus on 
the other hand, which alienates the small sufferer and 
breaks the power of suggestion. 

As intelligence develops, the treatment should include 
the fullest practicable enlightenment of the young mind 
as to the virtue of courage and good cheer under tribula- 
tion, small and great. Very soon will the child take him- 
self in hand, — sometimes with rigor enough to shame 
his elders. 

2. Kindness. The warmth and beauty bestowed on 
the inner life by the cheerful disposition are imparted to 
the outer by kindness. Abraham Lincoln is the most 
beloved of our heroes by the power of his universal kind- 
ness ; without that his honesty, his wit and logic, his will 
of flawless steel, and even his incomparable services to 
the Republic, would never have won him his place in 
our hearts and his power over our ideals and lives. It is 
no accident that as his character ripened and was fully 
revealed, " Honest Abe" became "Father Abraham." 
How deep in his own heart this quality was rooted is 
suggested by the comfort he took, late in life, from his 
sincere conviction that throughout he "had plucked a 
thorn where he could, and had planted a rose wherever 



DISPOSITION $S 

he thought a rose would grow." Macbeth deliberately 
renounced the "milk of human kindness/' and lived to 
find his outward success a sham, and himself poor be- 
cause he lacked "what old age should have, as honor, 
love, obedience, troops of friends." All history and liter- 
ature, as well as everyday life, put this quality of kind- 
ness into the catalogue of the indispensable virtues of 
human character. 

There is health and growth in kindness of disposition as 
there is in cheerfulness ; human lif e is so largely social 
that development of the individual depends much upon 
his right relation to his fellows, and kindness is the basic 
virtue of that relation. The child is to receive most of his 
early training and culture in unconscious interchange 
with those about him, and kindness opens up the channels 
for the healthy operation of this process. Good feeling 
toward our associates favors interest and confidence, and 
these encourage the spiritual commerce between elder 
and younger that is so large a part of education. Thus 
the importance of kindness of disposition is far deeper than 
the mere sweetness and charm of friendly and helpful 
association, and is a genuine condition of growth and 
cultivation. It is indeed the essential hygiene of social 
life, and social life is the essential condition of humanity ; 
so without the spirit of kindness true human nature, with 
its powers of intelligence and feeling, would never have 
existed, and without the same disposition it cannot be 
preserved and enlarged. 

The first maxim for the cultivation of the kindly dis- 



56 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

position is similar to the first in the cultivation of cheer- 
fulness, — make way for the natural impulse of love and 
affection, so that it may well up freely in the full measure 
of nature's endowment. Use every means of example 
and suggestion to quicken and confirm the kindly im- 
pulses that spring so powerfully and so abundantly in the 
normal child. One of the most powerful conditions that 
favor the growth of kindness is the prevalence of cheer- 
fulness ; thus education works into its own hands, here, 
as in so many other cases ; all that is wisely done to culti- 
vate cheerfulness smooths the way for kindliness also. 

Avoid occasions of strife and conflict, either between 
child and elders, or between children playing together. 
Especially in the first two or three years, before the child 
can comprehend any explanation of his social relations, 
must every care be used in so ordering his material and 
social situation as to favor smoothness and contentment. 
This is the golden age for disposition, and in its favor we 
must, if need be, sacrifice, or rather postpone, some other 
forms of training; the truth is, there is as yet little 
danger as to permanent habits or ideals ; if we can con- 
serve the basic strata of disposition, the rest can be built 
more efficiently and economically later. (It need hardly 
be repeated here that bodily health and development are 
of course even more fundamental than disposition; dis- 
position being the first psychic element.) 

Not that the mother need be worried by the little tem- 
pers and squabbles of children, which are the common lot 
of the normal flesh-and-blood youngster; only let the 



DISPOSITION 57 

environment and regimen tend to avoid and minimize 
these, and so give the fullest time allowance to sunny and 
loving soul- weather ; thus will the traces on the brain be 
predominantly for kindliness of permanent disposition. 

The chief positive generator of disposition in general, 
and particularly of kindness, is what the modern psychol- 
ogist calls suggestion, which is largely identical with the 
good old idea of example. The child is a psychic chame- 
leon (and no one ever fully outgrows the nature), and 
takes his tone from those about him ; whatever you de- 
sire in your child, have that in yourself : this is the deep- 
est educational principle, and a wonderfully beneficent 
one to the educator also, for it spurs him to new moral 
achievement for the sake of his protege. The law of 
example is the scripture, " Give and it shall be given unto 
you ; full measure, shaken down, pressed together, run- 
ning over/' or, again, in adapted phrase, " Whatsoever 
ye would that your child should be to you, be ye even 
so unto him." 

Yet this needs immediate interpretation : the old say- 
ing has it that "good mothers make bad daughters," and 
in the same sense it is true that kind parents may make 
selfish children ; or even more strikingly true, that kind 
children may make selfish playmates. The mother who 
lets her affection overrule her better wisdom, her sense of 
justice, her knowledge of the child's real duty and welfare 
may indeed be responsible for the child's selfish and in- 
considerate disposition. Especially is that parent peri- 
lously wrong who, out of a false softness toward her own 



58 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

child, permits the child to impose upon playmates and 
vent its petty spleen unpunished. True kindness does 
not always smile, but finds its fit expression rather in sharp 
reproof or stern command, or even in more decided dis- 
cipline. Do not doubt the truth, O Mother or Teacher, 
that this brief necessary sharpness will give tone and 
power to your habitual and general love and gentleness, 
and so the two seeming opposites combine their forces 
toward the longed-for result. 

Disposition and Habit. Disposition always lies per- 
plexingly close to habit, and indeed, psychologically, not 
only disposition, but practically all the elements of edu- 
cation and character, are habit; that is, they consist of 
fixed ways of reacting to definite stimuli. Disposition, 
however, runs constantly into habit in the narrower sense 
in which we use the term. Cheerfulness and hopefulness, 
at first a general tone and tendency of the mind, em- 
body and confirm themselves into certain definite ways 
of thinking and acting. The cheerful man gets into the 
way of l looking on the bright side/ and of taking de- 
liberate note of 'how much worse it might have been.' 
Out of the mass of contrasting elements in any situation 
he gives preference in his attention to the pleasant, the 
encouraging, the desirable. The hopeful disposition leads 
to the habit of picking out and emphasizing the more 
promising facts in the situation, and, what is even more 
important, out of several possible future results, fixing 
upon the most desirable one that reason will permit, and 
so opening the way for endeavor. 



DISPOSITION 59 

The embodiment of disposition in habits is seen more 
clearly in the case of kindliness. As faith without works 
is dead, so kindness without its expression in helpfulness 
is a sham. The drama and the novel both powerfully 
stimulate the emotions of love and sympathy, and are 
both credited with great educative power; the serious 
question is whether the emotion which is thus smothered 
within the breast and robbed of all expression in conduct 
is not more injurious than beneficial. At any rate, it is a 
familiar fact that the playgoer who has been snuffling and 
wiping his eyes over the melodramatic woes of the heroine 
has no difficulty in ignoring the real misery and degrada- 
tion that lie about him on his way home. Education 
proper cannot afford to lose the power of outward expres- 
sion of all the inner emotional elements it seeks to cul- 
tivate. 

All this points out the further path of training after 
the first stretch of disposition is covered; the educator 
encourages, by example, and now also by precept and 
explanation, all these good habits that grow naturally 
upon disposition. He watches the young mind in its 
encounter with its world, and, as opportunity offers, he 
puts in help and counsel to throw the balance in favor of 
the right action and so the right habituation. 



CHAPTER IV 

Habits 

In one sense the whole process of development consists 
of the formation of habits ; for knowledge itself, and the 
powers of thought, as well as the higher elements in the 
will, all depend upon the establishment of fixed ways of 
reacting to given stimuli. Consequently, the general laws 
of habituation underlie the whole of education. But the 
term habit is more commonly restricted to those estab- 
lished reactions that act with little or no participation of 
consciousness, or, in other words, mechanically or auto- 
matically. Such habits as these begin to form very early, 
and constitute a kind of supporting framework for the 
higher elements of character. 

The number of such habits is unlimited, and their 
form and use infinitely varied. Many are purely me- 
chanical, as the movements of walking and running, the 
little arts of dressing, washing, combing the hair, the use 
of spoon and knife and fork, and a hundred other small 
accomplishments that must be mastered, with no small 
effort and perseverance, before the baby can claim to be 
boy or girl. The most marvelous of these mechanical 
habits is that of speech, including the complex processes 

60 



HABITS 6l 

required for the articulation of single words, and the still 
more intricate task of uttering phrases and sentences. 

Our general aim leads us to select from the great mass 
of habits a very few that have peculiar importance in re- 
lation to character : first, obedience, that stands by itself 
as the peculiar acquired virtue of childhood, and has a 
unique role in the development of the will; then three 
habits that should penetrate all activity and later devel- 
opment, industry, thoughtfulness, and truthfulness. 

THE FORMATION OF HABITS 

Because habit is typical of all educative process and 
exhibits that process in its most definite form, the process 
of habit-formation is worth close attention. There is a 
prevalent idea that the mere repetition of an act will create 
a habit ; now the churn dog treads the churn regularly on 
a certain day each week, but so far from forming a habit 
of churning on that day he forms a habit of " hiding out" 
whenever he gets a chance. The indolent boy goes to 
school every day in the week until Saturday, but he shows 
no tendency to form such a habit that he cannot stay 
away on Saturday; and when the vacation comes, or 
when his school days are over, his mind rebounds from 
school and all its works like a rubber ball from the side of 
the house. On the other hand, let the dog be practiced in 
driving the cows home at night, and he may develop an 
effective habit that will impel him to the act night after 
night ; and let the boy go frequently to the gymnasium or 
swimming pool, and a habit will certainly be the result. 



62 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not 
the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it estab- 
lished by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed 
tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given 
stimulus ; and the formation of habit always involves the 
two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. 
The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any 
stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his 
father's will ; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as 
a matter of course does not occur. The churn dog has 
two real habits, one of obeying his master, which gets him 
into the treadmill upon command ; the other, of trotting 
away with his paws when he feels the slats slipping from 
under him. When these two habits get together, they do 
the churning ; if Rover slips away from sight and sound 
of his master's eye and voice, the necessary first stimulus 
is lacking and somebody besides Rover has to drudge at 
the churn. 

The first practical inference is that mere external and 
visible acts are not a safe criterion as to the formation or 
existence of a habit : habit is a psychic thing, and its real 
form and value depend on the two psychic elements, the 
stimulus and the reaction that responds to it. Whenever 
the organism (the boy, for example) really and spontane- 
ously responds to a certain stimulus with a certain act, 
the foundation is being laid for a real habit. The boy 
hears about what goes on at the gymnasium and has a 
natural tendency to respond by going; the oftener this 
natural tendency repeats itself, the stronger and more 



HABITS 63 

certain the reaction becomes, — always understood that 
other factors may intervene, as, for example, some more 
powerful attraction may usurp the time required for the 
gymnasium. The dog has a natural ancestral impulse 
to chase cows, and when he has responded under direc- 
tion from his master, in a certain way for a sufficient 
number of times, he forms the habit and will go after the 
cows at the proper time without special command ; the 
waning light, the late afternoon activities, and other signs 
are sufficient stimulus to provoke the response. 

The second practical conclusion is the necessity for 
rooting a habit in a natural spontaneous tendency; it 
will never really grow in anything else, and the educator 
must seek the appropriate root with all diligence. 

Finally, it is necessary to discern clearly what response 
and what stimulus we wish to cement into habit, and 
labor to embrace them in the training that is to produce 
the desired result : we must find a way of applying the 
stimulus, or more truly arousing the native impulse, so as 
to produce the desired reaction, then we must repeat this 
process with proper frequency and persistence. Let us 
pass on to consider how all this may apply to the partic- 
ular habits we are to discuss. 

1. Obedience. In obedience the stimulus is the ex- 
pressed will of a person in authority, and the response is 
the performance of the required act. The will and its ex- 
pression may vary almost indefinitely, from the strongest 
command to the slightest desire couched in the mildest 
suggestion or indicated by an almost imperceptible sign. 



64 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

It is necessary to note clearly that obedience is by no 
means general in its scope, but that it is confined to 
certain definite authorities, particularly the parents and 
elder relatives, and the teacher. The habit of complying 
with all requests or orders from whatsoever source would, 
of course, be far from a virtue. 

In these days it is peculiarly necessary to understand 
that obedience, both as an act and as a habit, so far from 
being in any way derogatory to the honor of a human being 
or hostile to the happy freedom of childhood, is in vital 
accord with both of these. It springs from the soul of the 
child as naturally as do self-respect and personality, hav- 
ing its roots in one principal and several secondary im- 
pulses. The principal root is, of course, suggestibility, 
which makes the child tend to do whatever is put before 
him to be done. The secondary roots are in the impulses 
of activity, which makes him, as it were, hungry for things 
to do, and grateful to whomsoever will help him fill the 
void ; in love, which binds him to those particular persons 
toward whom his obedience should be principally trained ; 
and both last and least, yet indispensable, in fear, which 
fills up gaps in the other forces, and holds some ground 
until it can be occupied permanently by higher elements. 

The importance of obedience in the evolution of the 
will, and therefore of character in the fullest sense, is im- 
mense. To put it briefly, obedience is the regent of the 
future independent will, playing a large part in the com- 
mand of the immature life until the will itself can be formed 
and fitted to rule. Obedience is thus the virtue par 



HABITS 65 

excellence of childhood, and the child who is not trained to 
a high degree in obedience is wronged beyond reparation 
because crippled for anything like full development in 
mature character. The little child has yet no will of his 
own, but only impulses, — numberless, unorganized, con- 
flicting with each other and with all the conditions sur- 
rounding the child in the actual world. There is only one 
way of hope and safety, in the overruling power of mature 
wisdom and rational control. This control works through 
discipline (in the broad and genial sense of the term) and 
embodies its first result in obedience. Mainly through 
this external control and guidance do order and harmony 
enter into the field of impulses, transforming them gradu- 
ually into a self-directing will, having unity within itself 
and acting in enlightened accord with the laws of the outer 
world. 

A profound analogy exists, indeed, between the subor- 
dination of the child's caprice and immaturity to the en- 
lightened and rational will of his elders, and that higher 
subordination of the impulses of the mature will to prin- 
ciples and ideals which constitutes the full perfection of 
character. Both are in a sense subordination to an ex- 
ternal authority: the unseen monitor whose voice Soc- 
rates obeyed so implicitly was felt as coming from with- 
out his own personal spirit ; the heroes and saints of all 
times have been persuaded of the existence and power of 
an authority beyond themselves ; they have all held, in 
varying forms, the conviction of Jesus, "The Father, who 
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." So obedience in the 



66 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

child is an apprenticeship, under simple and concrete 
terms, for the full mastership of will and the perfect reali- 
zation of human personality. The child's will looks for 
guidance to parent and elders, having confidence in the 
Tightness of their decisions ; but by imperceptible degrees 
his allegiance to these persons because they are right is 
transformed into allegiance to the right itself : and this is 
autonomy of the will and human personality. 

The army is a sort of working model to illustrate the 
virtue and evolution of obedience. The young recruit 
obeys the whole hierarchy of officers, from corporal up to 
commander. After he has won some skill and practice in 
obeying, if he is an apt pupil at that, he may be raised one 
step, and given rule over a handful of men, literally "a 
corporal's guard" for a limited and special occasion. So 
upward he goes, his progress in command always depend- 
ing upon his perfection in obedience. Moreover, military 
life also gives us the significant picture of grown men 
finding so much honor and delight in obedience that they 
go gladly to death in the service of a Caesar or Napoleon, 
knowing no higher law or more excellent destiny than to 
follow his fortunes and execute his commands. Nor are 
they such men as could be suspected of weakness, pusil- 
lanimity, lack of spirit or energy. So little does obedience 
mean derogation of strength or dignity even among men. 

To come nearer home, the child himself rejoices in the 
hand of a master, if only the hand be just, wise, and 
resolute. Who has not overheard school children passing 
familiar verdict upon this teacher and that, deriding weak- 



HABITS 67 

ness and indulgence, and glorying in the discipline, in- 
convenient though it was to their tricks and mischief, 
that abolished trifling and would brook no insubordina- 
tion. 

As to the cultivation of obedience, no one who has ob- 
served children's relations to parents and teachers can be 
in doubt as to the chief means to success : one parent may 
request, entreat, command, threaten, with scant effect 
and no genuine success ; another needs only to speak or, 
like the King of the Gods, to nod, and it is done. He 
who would be obeyed must be worthy of commanding ; 
then he will not often need to speak twice. Long before 
the child would understand the phrase, he knows whether 
his mother means what she says or not. Command is an 
influence of one will upon another, and it operates in ac- 
cordance with a sort of mechanical law of superior force ; 
not, be it quickly added, mechanical force, but psychic, 
volitional, spiritual. To secure obedience, as act and 
habit, let the educator seek to enrich his own spirit and 
imbue his rule with these three : the light of reason, in 
not requiring aught but what is just and sensible; the 
warmth of affection, in always seeking both the welfare 
and the happiness of the child ; and the power of deter- 
mination, in seeing through to the end what he has 
thoughtfully and kindly undertaken. Above all things, 
do not blame the child for disobedience; punishment 
you may have to resort to, but the real responsibility 
rests upon the educator, and he should search in his own 
spirit and conduct for the cause of failure. 



68 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

Very early, as soon as the child begins to understand 
words, a beginning can be made in simple directions and 
commands: "Bring it to Mother," "Pick up the dolly," 
"Put it on the table/' and the like, break the path for the 
fuller operation of suggestibility, while, by the way, they 
also stimulate the intellectual processes in general and so 
have an additional justification in the training of the 
period. It is delightful and instructive to notice with 
how much pleasure the child exercises his new powers of 
comprehension and activity ; at the sound of the words of 
request his face is filled with eager effort to grasp the 
meaning, and when the idea dawns he runs away gladly 
to carry it out in act. Very early, also, he may learn the 
meaning of No, and have some training in submission to 
its authority. This brings us to two of the most useful 
practical maxims in the cultivation of obedience. 

First, and most familiar, and yet far from properly 
recognized, is the principle of the active and positive. Do 
this jumps with the very nature of the child; DonH do 
that contradicts child-nature, and tends to countermand 
itself. The positive command enlists the mighty impulse 
of activity on the side of obedience ; the prohibition sets 
that impulse at war with obedience. Certainly prohibi- 
tion must have a place in all discipline, and the child must 
learn the force of No; but right discipline has its main 
current and tenor in doing, not in refraining ; the educa- 
tor-authority is the guide and inspirer of the child's active 
life, making that life richer, more interesting, more valu- 
able, to the child ; and only as authority is thus the rec- 



HABITS 69 

ognized benefactor will true obedience, as act and as 
habit, result. The true Holy Spirit of Guidance is always 
a paraclete, as the Gospel has it, — one who goes on in 
advance and calls upon the disciple to follow and emulate. 

It must be confessed that the school has been a great 
sinner through its negative morality; the good boy or 
girl in school is too often the one who does not do wrong, — 
perfect deportment is too often a synonym for mere pas- 
sivity, such as might be exemplified by a jellyfish. The 
essence of schoolroom order has been all donHs: don't 
whisper, don't make a noise, don't leave your seat, don't 
disturb or annoy your neighbor, and so on ad nauseam. 
For all this, as for everything else in the world, there have 
been sufficient causes, but these do not make out a valid 
excuse. While pedagogy, both in theory and practice, has 
been backward, the prophets have long been declaring the 
truth: any teacher may get both light and inspiration 
from Emerson's " Education," Dewey's " School and 
Society," and Scott's " Social Education," to name only 
three out of many excellent sources. 

There is unfortunately no reason to suppose that home 
discipline is much better : mothers and fathers also tend 
to mix far too many donHs in their government, until 
children come to feel that their parents are the natural 
enemies of their activities. This is no plea for indulgence 
or slackness: on the contrary, as things are, discipline 
often falls into ruin, because a swarm of petty don'ts 
squander without effect the force that should go into one 
uncompromising No; authority has spent itself in vain 



70 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

on mint and anise and cummin, and has no power to 
command over the greater things. 

A wise old book on education tells the teacher and 
parent to avoid square issues ; the square issue between 
parent and child is worse than the strait between Scylla 
and Charybdis : on the one side is obstinacy, resistance, 
rebellion, resentment, bitterness, the darkening of life for 
an hour or a day or sometimes for a tragically longer 
time. On the other is surrender and the loss of prestige 
and control. The worst strategy is to despise the strength 
of one's opponent, and it is poor pedagogy to minimize 
the difficulty of serious tasks ; the happy solution of the 
problems of conflict of will between parent and child is 
found only "by prayer and fasting" figuratively speak- 
ing : that is, each individual must solve his own particular 
problem, and will need to bring to all his best wis- 
dom, tact, and resolution. Some things may be said in 
general : first, of course, comes the absolute justice and 
reasonableness of the requirement made by the parent: 
the old-fashioned father who declared, not seldom with 
much warmth, that his will was law, was on the wrong 
tack, even if his will happened to be right in the particular 
point. The child must obey the parent's will, even when 
he cannot understand the reason, still because it is right; 
and as soon as the parent's will ceases to be right, it 
loses its authority in abstract justice, and will lose it in 
the eyes of the child. Be very sure you are right before 
you go ahead ; and if you find out that you are wrong, 
retract and withdraw from the untenable position ; hap- 



HABITS 71 

piness, dignity, authority, obedience, will all be enhanced 
in the long run. 

The great positive means to obedience is authority; 
trite as this may seem, it needs emphasis. We have 
spoken of the suggestibility of the child, which leads him 
to perform any act that is presented to his mind, whether 
as an injunction or as a prohibition ; but fortunately that 
is not all of suggestibility, for as soon as the child can 
comprehend the difference between do this and dorft do 
that, he has a tendency to acquiesce ; and as his training 
proceeds, this tendency to acquiesce is reenforced by dis- 
cipline and experience, by rewards and punishments, and 
becomes more and more decisive. There are certainly 
many occasions when a counter-impulse overcomes the 
obeying impulse ; but one of the most important things 
about impulses is the fact that an impulse is only a tend- 
ency, and its being overcome by another tendency does 
not abolish its existence and value. Indeed, there is in 
the child a tendency diametrically opposed to the obeying 
impulse; namely, the self-assertive or " contrary " im- 
pulse, that makes it incline to do just what it is told not 
to do, — although this impulse is more characteristic of 
some adults than of children. But, nevertheless, the 
obeying instinct is there, and the appeal to it is through 
clear, strong, decided command or prohibition, backed by 
vigorous action when need is. 

The child is naturally responsive to the tones, manner, 
and attitude of authority, and the natural instinct should 
be early developed into habit, and so rendered permanent. 



72 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

A baby less than a year and a half old feels the difference 
between the voice of decision and that of irresolution, 
and acts accordingly. No wonder, then, that the older 
child has formed a fixed habit of obedience or disregard 
for father or mother. Nor is the child slow to seize an 
opportunity to put himself into the place of authority: 
sometimes the parent might well take lessons in the voice 
and manner of command from the child who has usurped 
the throne. The impulses of self-assertion are always 
ready to thrust themselves into the gap, and when they 
do rise in revolt, being, like all other child-impulses, violent 
and unmediated, an intolerable despotism results. Then 
caprice and whim take command not merely of the child 
and the household, but also of his development; the 
domestic turmoil might be endured, but the injury to the 
growing character is beyond repair or indemnity. 

No study of obedience would be complete without a 
consideration of the place of fear. As we have already 
suggested, there is a sort of hierarchy of fears, beginning 
with the lowest form of blind, instinctive, panic fear, 
which has so little use in human development, and run- 
ning through all degrees of greater and greater enlighten- 
ment and rationality, to such fear as, for example, Inger- 
soll had in mind when he said that Lincoln feared nothing 
except doing wrong; or as is implied in Shakespeare's 
lines, "I dare do all that may become a man; who dares 
do more is none." Panic fear, at the lower end of the 
scale, belongs to the subhuman stage of development, 
and is to be eliminated from the growing human soul with 



HABITS 73 

all possible speed and perfection ; it is an almost unmiti- 
gated evil, checking healthy activity, and blocking the 
currents of genial and wholesome life and growth; be- 
sides being in itself one of the most painful experiences 
known to our consciousness. 

Almost as bad is the crude fear of pain or punishment : 
like instinctive panic fear, it also depresses all the natural 
processes of life and therefore of growth, and has no light 
or leading in it, The child who acts or refrains purely 
from fear of punishment may thereby escape danger or 
avoid doing damage, but he makes no progress in his own 
moral nature. The punishment he fears is external to 
his own self, has no real hold on him except as it threatens 
to fall upon him ; and when the actual imminence of the 
penalty passes over, the will of the child springs back to 
the forbidden act. Yet such fear must probably be used 
in most or all cases in early childhood, to save the yet 
irrational and uncomprehending child from doing injury to 
himself and to his surroundings, animate and inanimate. 
The next step above mere punishment, or the fear of it, is 
the dread of the disapproval and rebuke of the parent; 
this, it will be seen, involves much besides mere fear, for it 
is based upon love and respect. The third step is the 
fear of those consequences of the act that make it wrong 
in the eyes of the parent ; but this has quite passed the 
limits of mere obedience and has risen to the stage of 
rational self-direction. 

Fear, then, is to be gradually transformed into caution, 
prudence, and, best of all, conscience. The process is 



74 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

through enlightenment and awakening ; in place of mere 
fear must come the perception of the danger or injury 
against which the fear was a sort of blind sentinel. In- 
stead of the primitive selfishness in fear must arise a 
feeling for the opinions and wishes of parent or others in 
authority, and still higher, a sense of one's own situation 
and responsibility as a member of a community, large or 
small. 

When all has been said in deprecation of rule by fear, 
one is driven to the opinion that our times, and particu- 
larly our own country, are in far less danger of too much 
fear than they are of too little respect ; in the older type 
of discipline the child was likely to be repressed and 
dwarfed ; now he is more apt to grow up to insubordina- 
tion, both at home and toward the laws of the land. 
Reverence, which Goethe makes the very soul of training, 
is hardly to be mentioned. 

2. Industry. Two factors multiplied together give the 
measure of efficiency : ability or skill, and industry ; and 
of these industry is the greater, first, because it is more 
attainable to all, and second, because it not only multiplies 
skill to make efficiency, but it is an indispensable factor 
in the creation of skill ; so industry enters twice into the 
calculation. Unfortunately, industry and its product, effi- 
ciency, have in this commercial age been elevated some- 
what above their own place, dignified as that is. We 
have set up an idol of efficiency, with industry shining in 
reflected splendor, all to the neglect of some higher things, 
as, for example, real happiness and good conscience. So 



HABITS 75 

we may spare further glorification of industry, and pass 
to some of its essential elements and its genesis as a habit. 

The restless activity of the child is at first, like other 
organic beginnings, without form and void. It has no pur- 
pose nor direction ; its immediate external effects are apt 
to be quite as much injurious as beneficial. It is that en- 
ergy without direction which, as Emerson says, is terrible. 
True, even child-nature begins early to provide some di- 
rection, for the child manifests marked preferences for 
some acts and occupations : these are the native or spon- 
taneous interests. In the channels of these interests the 
activity of the child flows most freely and abundantly. 
But the native interests are far from being in full harmony 
with the outer world ; many of them have their natural 
results in broken china and defaced wall paper, and must 
be inhibited or modified. Besides, they do not run of 
their own course into the occupations of the grown man or 
woman. Now the training of these natural activities and 
interests into a form that works into mature life and its 
duties, is the problem of the cultivation of the habit of 
industry. 

First is the opening up of sufficient channels to allow 
the free flow of the natural energy, so that the flow may 
not be discouraged or checked, but may flourish and in- 
crease with the increase in years and powers. As we have 
seen in considering the impulse of activity, the organic 
health and development of the child demands much free 
movement: and especially does the maintenance of his 
output of energy, which so largely fixes the limit of his 



76 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

later efficiency, depend upon the largest scope and en- 
couragement of the child's abundant spring of activity; 
for the outgoing currents of motor activity send back 
stimulus and nurture to his organic life. Adult human 
beings can be computed by a sort of indicated horse power, 
like engines or turbine wheels ; the training of the child 
should nurture and increase this potential energy for 
manhood or womanhood. 

Too little attention is paid to the educative quality of 
toys and plays ; the plaything that gives the child some- 
thing to make or do has the beauty of gratifying the 
child's love of action and construction, and at the same 
time exercising a subtle yet considerable influence on his 
development into the habit of activity and industry. 1 
As an example of the wrong method we recall a father who 
brought home for his ten-year-old son a marvelous play 
fortress, made in a score of parts to be put together, not 
without pains and thought, to make the complete model 
with its walls and bastions, cannons and sentries, build- 
ings and flagpoles. The boy was quite old enough to 
master the task, would have been enchanted with the 
doing of it, and, moreover, greatly needed the kind of 
training it would have given, and yet the father spent a 
whole hour after the boy's bedtime setting up the model, 
so that the boy might see it all complete the next day ; 
so far as I know, the boy never set it up himself at all, — 
for fear he should break it, forsooth. 

1 See Paulsen's charming and illuminating essay " Village and Village 
School," in the Educational Review, December, 1906, especially pp. 
449-450. 



HABITS 77 

The harmony between the child's nature and the needs 
of his development is manifested in his love for toys and 
plays that set him to work ; blocks, tops, marbles, puzzles, 
balls of all kinds, hoops, skates, and so on ad libitum,, all 
set tasks upon which the youngster may whet his energy 
and persistence. The best toy is the one that will get 
the most work out of the child ; the poorest, the one on 
which some one else has done all the work in advance. 
The German fortress was bad enough to begin with, for 
the lad might better have made most of the parts himself ; 
the father robbed it of its remaining value and left it only 
the power to stimulate idle curiosity and militarism. 

Next comes the direction of this energy: while the 
natural interests of the child do not fit his environment 
nor his prospective occupation exactly, yet education 
must rely upon them to vitalize whatever direction it 
wishes to give to activity. We dare not crush nor choke 
these interests, for that would destroy or diminish the 
potential energy; but we must — and fortunately we 
can — find among the native interests those that may be 
modified or developed into adult activities. Sometimes 
a child comes into the world clearly marked for some 
particular work, — he is from the first a musician, or an 
engineer, or a trader ; but far of tener his interests are so 
manifold and so mutable that no one of them stands out 
above the rest. But really in either case the essential basis 
will be found for the development of healthy and useful 
activities. The fact is that the bare impulse of the infant 
to be moving, changes at a tender age to an impulse to be 



78 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

doing something ; and soon the child develops a marked 
love of making his impress upon his environment, of con- 
structing something, or changing things in some way that 
suits his fancy. 

The great resource of training at this point is another of 
the native tendencies, that of suggestibility, by which the 
example and precept of the elder may provide definite 
forms for the child's activity : he will do with delight what 
he is shown or what he is told. Indeed, he is constantly 
on the lookout for things to do, and the mere sight of 
sweeping or hammering or writing sets off his impulse to 
attempt the same, long before his untrained hand has 
power to perfect the trick, or his limited intelligence can 
grasp the purpose and the method. So the selection and 
direction of activities is not so hard a task as it might be. 
It does call, however, for far more patient and extensive 
observation and study of child-activity than the adult 
world has yet performed ; and this task is largely in the 
hands of the parent. The secret is to find the sort of 
things that the child does naturally and easily, and work 
through them to the desired ends. 

As soon as we begin to select certain of the child's in- 
terests and try to favor them above others, we meet the 
problem of concentration and endurance : the child must 
learn to overcome obstacles instead of giving way to them 
or merely being exasperated by them ; and he must begin 
to increase his power to stick to the same task even after 
the charm of novelty is worn off. Both of these powers 
are small in childhood, but are indispensable to mature 



HABITS 79 

character. Some one has said that one of the best results 
of education is the power to do the thing you don't want to 
do, at the time you don't want to do it. We must not 
overtask the child's limited endurance, but he must learn 
the difference between being really tired, and merely tired 
of the particular task at which he is engaged. 

Closely connected with the increase in persistence is the 
development of the sense of responsibility for a particular 
task : the moral philosopher is fond of saying that there 
is a work in the world for each one of us which no one else 
can do, and the sooner the small man gets this idea, the 
better for him and his development. Industry is devo- 
tion to one's own work, and the child can never get any 
effective training in it until he has tasks of his very own. 
Just here is where modern urban life, which is the destiny 
of so large a proportion of children, is at a serious dis- 
advantage : there are neither cows to milk nor wood to 
chop, and in many cases not even a chance for the girl to 
wash dishes or be her mother's responsible aid in the kitchen. 
Yet for a boy or girl to reach the age of fifteen without 
having had generous experience of regular, individual 
tasks, is like letting them go all these years with one arm 
in a sling ; atrophy of the unused capacity is the natural 
consequence in either case. 1 

School work is doubtless of great use in this direction, 
the more as the newer ideas of activity and individual 
work win fuller recognition in the schoolroom. But the 

1 See again Paulsen's essay, "Village and Village School," Educational 
Review, December, 1906. 



80 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

older type of school work has little power in the establish- 
ment of the habit of industry ; and it is not yet safe for the 
home and parent to depend upon the school ; home tasks, 
in immediate relation to the common family life, are more 
effective and richer in their results. Moreover, even the 
school task must be backed up by home forces if it is to 
bear its full fruit of training in industry : shirking is hard 
to treat and cure in school, and comparatively easy 
through home cooperation. 

At the risk of getting beyond the boundaries of habit, 
we must refer here to an element that vitalizes the habit of 
industry and insures its permanence; that is, the power to 
pursue a purpose having its realization some time hence, 
the remote aim, we may call it. The poet says the 
thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, and it is 
partly true ; but the child's grasp of future ends is con- 
spicuously weak. The infant necessarily lives in the 
moment without the faintest idea of the future ; the little 
child clings to the joy at hand, unmoved by the assurance 
that sacrifice now will give tenfold returns to-morrow. 
Only by slow degrees is foresight gained and the power to 
strive or endure for the time, in order to reap the fruit 
later. The development of this power is intimately 
related with the habit of industry, each supporting and 
promoting the other. 

3. Thoughtfulness. The world is more and more ruled 
by brains, and the man who leads must think. Waste, 
loss, accident, and disease are traceable largely to igno- 
rance and heedlessness ; the best remedy for both these 



HABITS 8 1 

defects is the habit of thinking. We have already seen 
how generously nature has provided the impulse to 
thought in the little child, in the form of sense-hunger, 
followed by curiosity or the hunger for knowledge ; these 
impulses grow into a habit of thought as naturally as the 
tree grows out of the shoot ; all that is necessary is that 
the child's countless and ceaseless questions, What ? and 
Why ? andJHow ? shall be reasonably encouraged and sat- 
isfied; for thinking in adult life is simply applying the 
same attitude of query and investigation to the objects 
and problems one meets from day to day, and to the great 
world of nature and spirit in which one lives. Unhappily 
we must admit that the keen edge of child-curiosity is 
often blunted in early years, and the youth becomes in- 
different or even averse to mental activity: how much 
this is due to parental repression of the child's questions, 
and how much to school tasks and drill that have no 
appeal to child-nature, is a hard question ; at any rate, 
it is worth while for both parent and teacher to shun 
everything that tends to quench the flame of this impulse. 
The positive nurture of the native impulse of curiosity 
into the habit of thought is one of the most delightful 
tasks of parenthood; here the parent finds a peculiar 
double relation to the child, being first guide and superior, 
then, when the child grasps the new idea, standing on the 
same plane of intellectual equality; for logic and pure 
reason know nothing of youth or age, and when two minds 
think the same thought, they experience a happy com- 
munity. It need hardly be added that the teacher shares 



82 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

this experience with the parent, and finds it one of the 
chief rewards of his work. It is also clear that stimulus 
rather than information is what the young mind needs : 
the parent should sharpen the child's senses, helping him 
to see, hear, feel, perceive, what he might otherwise ig- 
nore. This is the first form of mental awakening, and 
leads almost infallibly to higher forms. A walk in the 
woods is an ideal occasion for such culture: forms and 
colors of trees, flowers, moss, rocks, and soils ; the songs of 
birds and the cries of animals, the shapes and tints of 
clouds, — all offer natural attraction and stimulus for 
sensory cultivation. Excellent are also the forms of 
water, — rain, mist, snow and its crystals, ice and icicles, 
streams with their rapids and falls, and placid surfaces 
with their reflections. 

As the child grows older, the emphasis passes insensibly 
from mere perception to judgnxent and reason, and the 
role of the parent becomes more exacting and perhaps 
even more inspiring. To be successful now demands 
that one think well oneself, — not necessarily with great 
erudition or scientific information, but with clearness, 
coherence, good reasoning, so that the same excellencies 
may be formed in the child-mind. Ever and always the 
great achievement is to let the child think, and so keep 
open and free the channels of the native impulse, from 
which alone the habit can be developed. 

But the objection will already have risen in the minds 
of many readers, that so we shall force the child to a false 
precocity that will mar his natural simplicity and damage 



HABITS 83 

his health: both dangers are real, but neither has any 
necessary connection with the training we have been 
describing. Priggishness is not at all the habit of think- 
ing about things, but rather of prating about them to 
those who already know more than the would-be inform- 
ant. Such a tendency is apt to show itself in any child, 
thoughtful or thoughtless, quite as likely in the latter as 
the former. It should, of course, be gently but firmly 
repressed and discouraged, like other spiritual weeds. 
Moreover, a little premature book knowledge tends far 
more to obnoxious precocity than does the more natural 
mental culture we have hinted at, through nature and the 
child's own surroundings. 

As to health, there is no evidence that mental alertness 
is detrimental to bodily growth and vigor. Some one may 
answer, "But what about the children who must be taken 
out of school to recover from anaemia, nervousness, general 
debility, or arrested physical development ?" First, we 
have said not a word about school ; the most enthusiastic 
advocate of school education cannot shut his eyes to the 
fact that the schoolroom as we have it, even in the best 
form, is not calculated to minister to physical prosperity ; 
it restricts natural movement, taxes sight and hearing, 
puts strain upon the nerves, and often, probably usually, 
gives the child impure air to breathe. Happily we live in 
the hopeful dawn of a better day in school regimen and 
hygiene ; it would be well if those who criticize our present 
schools so freely could serve a term or two in a school of 
the old type, with its hard and shapeless benches, its foul 



84 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

air, bad light, deadly dullness of curriculum, and harsh- 
ness of discipline. Besides this, we risk the assertion that 
the child who has been Jed to think a little before going 
to school, in the manner we have indicated, will deal more 
easily with his school tasks, and be less likely to break 
down. 

The fact is that children stop growing, become nervous, 
and break down, not from too much mental activity, 
but from too little fresh air, outdoor exercise, sunshine, 
sleep, and in general from a false and noxious physical 
regimen. Naturally a boy of ten or fifteen who spends 
reading or dabbling in a laboratory the hours in which 
nature demands that he should play ball, run, shout, 
wrestle, and work his lungs and heart like steam engines, 
will be pale and feeble, an easy prey to disease, and a 
hopeful candidate for invalidism. The trouble is not that 
he thinks too much, but that he plays too little. The 
boy who sits behind the stove and reads hour-long, should 
be driven out of doors ; or, rather, no child should ever be 
allowed to grow into such a boy. Let no one fear pre- 
cocity, so long as the child eats heartily, sleeps long and 
soundly, and plays exuberantly, as every normal child 
does. 

We must not omit to speak of one form of thoughtful- 
ness which is of peculiar importance ; we mean considera- 
tion for the feelings and interests of others. It is true 
that this is far more than a habit, and reaches up into the 
highest ranges of our spiritual life ; yet its best founda- 
tions are laid in the mental habit of taking our fellows into 



HABITS S5 

account in all our deliberations and plans. The impor- 
tance of this lower habitual element is shown in those 
people who have the best intentions, and who, when they 
are reminded of it, are kindness itself, but who through 
' thoughtlessness/ constantly tread on the toes of their 
friends and associates and omit the simplest acts of help- 
fulness and regard. Nor are persons unknown whose 
higher principles are not all that could be desired, and who 
may be at heart rather selfish, and yet whose habitual 
consideration for others wins them love and contributes 
largely to the happiness of their associates. How great, 
then, is the benefit when to the good heart is joined con- 
stant outward manifestation in a habit of kindly considera- 
tion. Just as the parent may stimulate and sharpen the 
child's sense for the outer world, and his comprehension 
of its forms and laws, so can he cultivate his perception 
and comprehension of the interests, feelings, plans, and 
wishes of his associates in the home and at play. The 
Golden Rule is one of the best auxiliaries in this task : the 
average child can quickly transfer his own feeling to the 
case of his playmate, and thus see his problems in a new 
and true light. 

4. ^Truthfulness. The first thing to say about the 
habit of truthfulness is that it is not a habit, but some- 
thing far greater ; as Richter says in his golden chapter 
on this virtue, " Truthfulness — that is, deliberate and 
self-sacrificing truthfulness, — is not so much a branch as 
rather the very flower of manly moral strength. Weak- 
lings cannot but lie, let them hate it as they will." 



86 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

Under stress of trial and temptation no habit, nor set of 
habits, will stand ; only ideals and principles will then 
hold a man firm in the truth. Nevertheless there is 
justification in treating truthfulness along with habits ; 
and, first, because lying is a habit in some defective or 
ill-starred children. 

The child naturally tells the truth as a part of his basic 
suggestibility : every idea tends to utter itself in word or 
deed : so when he has seen, heard, experienced, anything 
whatsoever, and has the image of it in his mind, he natu- 
rally puts that image into words. Similarly, when he has 
in mind an intention or plan for the future, it is natural 
for him upon occasion to express that in words also. This 
we believe to be absolutely true, and profoundly important 
in any study of the real nature of truthfulness and its 
contraries. But here, as with so many other natural 
tendencies, we must at once recognize the existence and 
power of conflicting forces that are just as natural. In 
childhood this natural tendency to truth is almost asiragile 
as the glassy surface of still water, on which the slightest 
breath of air will stir a thousand ripples, distorting and 
effacing the clear image that was just now mirrored in the 
pool. So impulses and contingencies blow in upon the 
mirror of truthfulness in the child's soul, and break its 
clear images into contradictions, exaggerations, equivoca- 
tions, fantasies, evasions, and all other forms of untruth. 
Two questions may be asked : first, What are the chief 
enemies of truthfulness in the child's life ? and, second, 
How may the frail original tendency to truth telling be 



HABITS 87 

invigorated and reenforced into that devotion to the truth 
that is so indispensable to human character ? 

Three elements threaten the child's natural truthful- 
ness; imagination, fear, and desire. The first produces 
images that do not correspond with reality, and these 
images have just the same suggestive power as the real, 
and lead to the ' romancing' that is so marked in certain 
children, — naturally in those possessing vivid fancy. 
Many parents are familiar with this type of untruth; 
Richter tells of a little girl, truthful in all ordinary mat- 
ters, who told him enthusiastic stories of how she had seen 
the Christ Child, and what he had said and done. Some- 
times these fancy-pictures are told with evident con- 
sciousness of their fiction, or even humor ; Sully tells of a 
little boy who, when asked who told him something, 
answered, " Dolly"; then burst into a laugh. All these 
forms of untruth must be regarded as a part of the child's 
play, on exactly the same footing as his other make- 
"ISelieves. Only when they take on any shade of real 
attempt to deceive should they be rebuked and discour- 
aged. To quote Richter : "In all these cases, do not hold 
before the child the image of the lie in its own forbidding 
blackness, but simply say; c Don't joke about it any 
more, but be serious.' " The same talented writer makes 
the interesting suggestion that children's fantastic nar- 
ratives may sometimes be dreamy which their immature 
minds have not been able to distinguish from actual ex- 
periences. 

Far more serious are the falsehoods generated by fear 



88 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

and desire, and especially the former. Here let us parents 
and teachers take to heart that weighty declaration of the 
Gospel: Woe unto him that causeth one of these little 
ones to stumble ! Avoid as far as may be the inquisi- 
torial question that tempts so sorely to denial of con- 
scious wrong ; learn the facts, if you possibly can, without 
cross-examination of the culprit. It would seem that the 
criminal court, which does not require the prisoner to tes- 
tify against himself, is more considerate of human frailty 
in the adult than the parental and pedagogical judiciary 
is of the tender conscience of the child ! Above all, let 
parent and teacher keep green the memory of their own 
childhood fears and the terrors of parental rebuke and 
displeasure. 

To punish the lie of fear is attempting to cure one 
wound by inflicting another ; it commissions a new fear 
to aid the old one in its attack upon truth. The most 
effective remedy is the grief that the parent should feel, 
and wisely manifest, that his child should be so lightly 
bound to him; and the tender endeavor to renew and 
strengthen those ties of affection and trust that would 
make repetition of the fault impossible. Courage and 
honor must also be called upon to condemn and forbid 
stooping to deceit in order to escape penalty. 

Very different is the lie of deliberation or cunning, told to 
escape consequences of wrong or avoid unpleasantness of 
any sort ; such lies point to that most perilous of all states, 
in which shrewdness has outrun conscience, and character 
is menaced by excess of intellect over principle. Here 



HABITS 89 

sharp rebuke and cutting penalty are in place ; especially 
must the child feel the contempt and abhorrence of his 
elders for the lie, — not, be it noted, for him, but for the 
act : he must be helped to convict and expel the wrong 
deed and so make it foreign to his own being, and to aid 
in this the condemnation must be leveled at the deed 
rather than the young doer. 

It need hardly be said that in all cases of escape-lies it 
it highly important that the escape should fail and the lie 
prove futile. Letting the children pull the wool over 
one's eyes is doubly dangerous through the encouragement 
it lends to dishonesty and deceit. This evil is extreme in 
certain forms of l self-reporting/ as when pupils in school 
answer the roll call at night with a statement of the num- 
ber of times they have whispered : honest confession is 
penalized, a premium put on smug deceit, and a general 
decay of faith in righteousness ensues. Neither parent 
nor teacher can afford to forget to be wise as serpents, as 
well as harmless as doves. 

Still worse is the contrary error of distrust and sus- 
picion toward the children. It is a very commonplace 
experience that children will deceive one who suspects 
them, when they would scorn to tell anything but the 
truth to those who put trust in them. It is unfortunate 
for the parent or teacher to be deceived by the child, but 
it is ten times worse that lack of confidence on the side of 
the elder should breed lack of candor and good faith in 
the younger. 

Chapters have been written on children's lies ; far more 



90 THE ESSENTIALS OE CHARACTER 

important and infinitely sadder would be the chapters 
on the lies of parents. We have not seen reports of any 
questionnaire on this subject, and unfortunately the re- 
turns from such an inquiry would be inherently worthless ; 
but we risk the assertion that in number, variety, enormity, 
and, above all, in damage done, the untruths of parents 
would put those of children into the shade. False threats 
and false promises, lies in jest and lies in earnest, foolish 
lies and cunning lies, all find their place in the catalogue. 
The astonishing thing is that men and women who are 
reasonably scrupulous in their communications to their 
adult associates will often play fast and loose with the 
truth in dealing with their children. As to that favorite 
question concerning the original truthfulness or untruth- 
fulness of children, it would be as easy to prove that 
children were born truthful and some were corrupted by 
unscrupulous parents, as that all were born without truth- 
fulness and some were saved by the virtuous precept 
and example of fathers and mothers. 

The little child conceives father and mother as all that 
we adults embody in our idea of the Divine, and the in- 
evitable disillusionment that comes with wider knowl- 
edge is at best a serious and painful experience ; can we 
not recall the sad surprise with which we first became 
aware that there were things beyond the wisdom and 
power of our fathers? Happy is the child who at least 
finds no need of abating his complete confidence in the 
honor of his parents : he is safe from the greatest peril 
that can threaten his own ideals of truthfulness. 



HABITS 91 

Happily, the majority of normal children, probably all 
of them, have a deep and potent horror of lies : excepting 
1 coward' only, 'liar' is the most intolerable epithet in 
schoolboy parlance. Probably most of us can still recall 
the dark and wretched shame we felt as little children 
after having fallen in a moment of stress into falsehood, or 
what we considered as such. The very love of children 
for 'really- truly' stories is significant ; as is the protest 
the little child will make against the slightest variation 
from the exact text of a favorite tale. Whether this 
element of conscience is native or an acquisition of the 
earliest years does not concern us here ; it is there, and is 
a powerful force for truthfulness. 

We may well conclude this part of our discussion by a 
return to the first proposition, that truthfulness as a 
positive, resistant, and aggressive virtue is the very flower 
of a perfected character ; we shall meet it again, and its 
associated higher virtues, in the form of ideals and life 
principles, in the higher regions of conscious moral life. 

Bad Habits. Although our theme is the essentials of 
character, and bad habits cannot possibly be one of these, 
yet we must turn aside for a moment to consider what 
are commonly known as "bad habits," for the reason that 
they are the insidious foes of all the elements of true 
character, and therefore the student of moral education 
or the worker in the field must be intelligent about these 
pathological forms of habit. Bad habits are so called 
first because they damage the body or the mind and 
stunt their development, and, second, because they en- 



92 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

slave the will and make full spiritual freedom impossible. 
In extreme cases the evil habit paralyzes all other im- 
pulses and principles and exercises complete tyranny over 
the life and conduct of its victim; even the smallest 
habit that defies the sovereignty of free rational choice 
is a deduction from fullness of life. 

Let us emphasize first of all that the only safe and final 
protection against bad habits is abundance of healthy, 
happy, natural activity; ' overcome evil with good' is 
the key to this problem, as to many others. Certainly 
there are special precautions and remedies for various 
cases, but these are subordinate and temporary ; even if 
we could by the aid of these drive out the bad habit, un- 
less we provide abundance of wholesome activity, the case 
is likely to be that of the Gospel parable, where the ejected 
devil returns to find his former dwelling c empty, swept, 
and garnished/ and enters in with seven other devils 
worse than himself. Children and youths, of all human 
beings, crave activity and variety with an insatiable 
hunger; if they do not find healthy occupation and 
diversion, they will inevitably acquire or even devise ab- 
normal and injurious activities. This is the great ex- 
cellence of games and sports, and also of various arts and 
accomplishments that interest and occupy boys and girls. 

By wholesome activity, then, we cut off the bad habit by 
refusing it time and space in which to take root. Next we 
must arm against it all the forces of self-respect and per- 
sonal honor, of which we shall speak fully in a later 
chapter. One more point here, concerning parental (and 



HABITS 93 

educational) vigilance against the beginnings of these 
habits. The very nature of habit is to be weak at first 
and to grow progressively strong until it becomes irre- 
sistible. This is peculiarly true in the case of the worst 
forms of bad habits, for they are contrary to nature, and 
so at the outset easily crowded out of the soul by normal 
impulses ; but soon they pervert the very nature of the 
soul, corrupt the currents of healthy life, and paralyze the 
very forces that should expel them. The most perplexing 
and perilous of bodily vices are eminently of this patho- 
logical type ; probably in every case the pernicious habit 
might have been nipped in the bud if only some wise and 
loving elder could have known of the first lapses into the 
act. Vigilance should include preventive precepts and 
enlightenment given at the fit time and in an appropriate 
manner; a prophylactic, as it were, arming the youth 
against certain particular perils, such as the ones already 
mentioned, and such minor vices as gambling, cigarette 
smoking, swearing, and the like. 



CHAPTER V 

Tastes 

Our likes and dislikes exert a fateful influence upon 
both our own happiness and our value to others. The 
ancients recognized this fully, but modern education has 
long neglected it and is now slowly beginning to rub its 
eyes and awake to the significance of training the tastes. 
To like the wrong things may mean the ruin of body and 
soul, a worthless and wretched life, and all that we may 
well pray to be delivered from. To like the right things is 
an indispensable condition to health of body and mind, 
to contentment and happiness, and to usefulness. Likes 
and dislikes run powerfully into habits and even affect 
principles : for when we are fond of a certain pleasure it 
is hard for us to condemn it, even though our reason bids 
us do so. It is a too familiar fact that some of the most 
deadly foes of physical health and vigor are certain tastes, 
either pathological, like that for intoxicants and narcotics, 
or excessive, as those of the gormand or sensualist. 

Man must fill up his life with something : if good is not 
at hand to attract and satisfy, then he will needs " fill his 
belly with the husks" that only swine should eat. Those 
classes and groups of men who almost universally indulge 
in drunkenness, as, for example, miners and marine stokers, 

94 



TASTES 95 

do so in the main not because they are morally worse than 
others, but because either from natural defect or lack of 
culture they have nothing better to do: to all higher 
enjoyments they are strangers, and the universal hunger 
for pleasure and diversion leads them irresistibly into 
those coarse and violent indulgences that are within their 
range. What is shown in lurid colors in them is simply 
the extreme of all cases in which the education of the 
tastes has been neglected; their lives are a striking and 
terrible object lesson; but every man whose tastes have 
been allowed to develop in wrong directions, or in whom 
the best tastes have failed of higher perfection, loses 
thereby from the inner joy and outer value of his whole 
life. Every good taste is a source and guarantee of happy, 
healthy hours and days, and thus of the enrichment and 
elevation of life. 

Of social and economic conditions that doom thousands 
of men and women to such unceasing toil and squalid 
surroundings that higher tastes are absolutely out of the 
question, what shall be said ? At least this, that educa- 
tion is only half of the remedy: hence the need, empha- 
sized elsewhere, of the educator, especially the parent, 
working also for general social uplift, in order that his 
educative labors may not be nullified by the crushing 
force of unfavorable environment. 

The aim of the education of the tastes will, of course, vary 
in detail with every individual child, in accordance with 
the peculiar bent of his natural impulses. But here, as 
elsewhere in human nature, there are some universals, 



96 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

and to these let us first turn. First of all is it clear 
that we should cultivate tastes that are wholesome, 
that not only do not injure but actually aid and encourage 
normal growth and healthy function in body and mind. 
Not quite so evident, perhaps, but quite as true, is it that 
we should strive for inexpensive tastes ; this because ex- 
pensive pleasures lay a heavy economic burden upon both 
the individual and upon the community : the man who, 
in order to enjoy himself, must have costly food, elegant 
clothing, a great establishment, high-priced wines and 
cigars, automobiles, steam yachts, and the like, must 
needs get possession of great sums of money ; sometimes 
it is the woman who has the expensive tastes ; in either case 
the pressure is the same, and the disastrous results to 
individual and social morals are just beginning to be ex- 
posed in our own days. "The love of money is a root of 
all evil," and costly tastes create love of money, and a 
host of evils come in the train. Every parent wants his 
child to be able to ' earn a living ' and gain enough to 
satisfy his wants ; but not all recognize that this end may 
be forwarded not only by increasing his earning power, 
but also by training him to be happy without much; in 
other words, by cultivating simple and inexpensive tastes. 
Fortunately the two kinds of tastes are largely identical : 
the most wholesome tastes are simple and inexpensive; 
the unbought joys of life in general minister to health and 
abundant vigor in soul and body. Let us consider in 
particular a few of these wholesome and inexpensive 
tastes. 



TASTES 97 

i. Wholesome Food. First of all comes one already 
hinted at in a previous passage, the taste for whole- 
some and natural food. To harp upon this theme seems 
almost an affront to the intelligence of the early guar- 
dians of childhood ; but it is hard to escape the convic- 
tion that thousands of children constantly suffer in their 
present health and their future welfare by indulgence in 
unsuitable diet. The truth is that certain artificial arti- 
cles of food have the power of stimulating the sense of 
taste very highly, and so exercising a sort of fascination 
upon the child : having once tasted the sugary, high-sea- 
soned, or aromatic, he no longer cares for the milk and 
bread and other common foods that his stomach really 
needs. He rejects these healthy foods and demands the 
others : seldom, indeed, has the mother, who has indulged 
him so far, the resolution to let hunger, if need be, cure 
the corruption of taste that indulgence has wrought. 

Every day that the child's acquaintance with the taste 
of complex or high-flavored food and drink can be post- 
poned is a day saved, and an advance made in the ground- 
ing of natural tastes. We have already called attention 
to the presence of strong native appetite for the whole- 
some foods of childhood; the whole battle consists in 
feeding these tastes abundantly and religiously avoiding 
even awakening the others. The method is infallible : the 
only difficulty is in executing it, and that difficulty will 
yield to vigilance and resolution ; the conflict is of true 
parental love versus indulgence, of intelligence and fore- 
sight against ignorance or feebleness of will. 

H 



98 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

2. Bodily Activity. We have already spoken of the 
powerful native tendency of the child to bodily activity 
— the first and most notable tendency in the earliest 
period of childhood. The primitive life of uncivilized 
men always gave abundant scope and encouragement for 
this tendency to establish itself thoroughly as a habit, 
and under those conditions there was no need of special 
training to secure continued activity and efficiency of the 
body. Civilization, however, has changed all this, and 
many of the callings followed by civilized man offer 
little opportunity and encouragement for physical activ- 
ity and vigor. The active and stimulating existence and 
outdoor life of the savage, exposed to the vicissitudes of 
weather and full of emergencies calling for strength and 
swiftness of limb, steady nerve, and long endurance, has 
given way to indoor life, bound to chairs and tables 
and desks, excluding the breezy open-air stimulus, forbid- 
ding all but the smallest amount of muscular movement. 
The result is that in the majority of cases the impulses of 
bodily activity in the child are checked and starved, and 
fail to be established as habits. The grown man and 
woman become averse to running, leaping, jumping, 
and other strenuous exercises, lose strength of muscle and 
keenness of nerve, and lapse into a comparative feeble and 
indolent physique. As Smiles says, " Hence in this age of 
progress we find so many stomachs weak as blotting paper, 
— hearts indicating ' fatty degeneration/ — unused, pith- 
less hands, calveless legs and limp bodies, without any 
elastic spring in them. . . . The mind itself grows sickly 



TASTES 99 

and distempered, the pursuit of knowledge is impeded, and 
manhood becomes withered, sickly, and stunted." Books 
have been written on the terrible threat of race degeneracy 
involved in this lapse of physical activity. It is clear that 
one of the duties of civilized education is to throw its 
powerful influence into the scale to conserve the native 
impulses and establish in permanent form the love and 
habit of bodily activity. 

Fortunately, the educational thought of our own time 
is thoroughly awake to the priceless value of play; the 
deep meaning of the universal play instinct in the child 
has dawned upon us, and we realize that intellectual prog- 
ress which is gained at the expense of the child's love of 
play and habit of play is too dearly bought. So we find 
schools, particularly in the primary grades, reducing the 
amount of mental work, increasing the proportion of 
physical activity in actual school work and making posi- 
tive provision in the shape of playgrounds, gymnasiums, 
field sports, excursions, and the like, for the physical de- 
velopment of the child. 

Every boy and every girl should be allowed and encour- 
aged and, if necessary, compelled to keep up his bodily activ- 
ity and efficiency. He should form what we may call the 
athletic habit, by which we mean first an intense love of 
physical activity in a variety of forms and also a settled 
habit of practicing such activity throughout his fife. We 
have treated this whole subject under that of tastes rather 
than habits, because the really most important thing is the 
love of an activity. The child, like the calf, the colt, and 



IOO THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

the lamb, is filled with a physical joy; every muscular 
movement thrills and exhilarates. This is the thing that 
we should most strive to preserve. For if the love of 
activity exists, the opportunity will be found and used. 
Hence the unrivaled value of play and sport, free and un- 
constrained, the natural and spontaneous expression of 
child-nature. 

Closely bound up with this athletic habit is what might 
be called the outdoor habit, — the love of fresh air, fields, 
woods, and streams; indifference to minor bodily dis- 
comfort, such as cold and heat, dampness, soiled hands, 
and even bruised and scratched bodies. It is a far greater 
defect in a child not to be able to climb a tree, swim a 
stream, jump a ditch, or run a half-mile, than to be 
unable to spell long words or tell the agricultural products 
of Bolivia. 

To take a rather long look at this question, we may note 
the fact that a human being may actually fend off the en- 
croachments of physical old age by preserving this habit 
of activity. Gladstone at eighty could still swing abroadax 
with delight and effect. Our own exemplar of approximate 
human perfection, President Eliot, is more vigorous in 
body at seventy-five than the majority of men at forty. 
In both these cases the joy and habit of bodily activity 
have been assiduously preserved throughout life. It is 
surely not necessary to dwell here upon the intimate re- 
lation of body and soul, and upon the fact that a perfect 
human life requires perfection in both sides of its 
nature ; and, furthermore, that every added element of 



TASTES IOI 

strength and vigor in the body is in itself a ground and 
cause for greater mental and spiritual power. 

In adolescence — that great crisis in human develop- 
ment — the battle against the peculiar perils of the 
period is half won if the boy still possesses the full joy of 
bodily vigor and perfection. Excessive sexual impulses 
and morbid or perverted tendencies find no foothold in a 
body hardened by athletic habits and seasoned by out- 
door exercise. Moreover, the very pride of bodily 
perfection — of which we shall speak more fully in a later 
chapter — is one of the greatest bulwarks against all 
forms of vice. 

It need hardly be said that the young person who is 
destined to enter a sedentary calling needs most of all 
to be cultivated and trained in his physical life. 
Particularly is this true of the student, whose various occu- 
pations in the pursuit of knowledge are nearly all hostile 
to bodily health and development. Defective vision is 
probably quite as often due to lack of general physical 
vigor as it is to excessive tasking of the eyes. Nervous 
breakdown, which is so common among the more studi- 
ous, is chargeable rather to neglect of the physical than 
to overdevelopment of the mental. 

When we consider school athletics, which is a subject of 
so much debate, in the light of these truths, it is quite clear 
that the great defect of our present practice is not excess of 
athletics, but a lack of proper distribution. The great 
importance of the subject may excuse repetition of 
what has been said so many times before, that while the 



102 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

high perfection of a few individuals is, no doubt, a legiti- 
mate aim, it is far more important that all the young 
people be developed to a reasonable normal degree of 
athletic efficiency. It is a prime fault of the present that 
the great majority of boys and girls in school and young 
men and women in college get their physical culture vica- 
riously, and for themselves develop only excessive lung 
power and strident vocal cords. It is time that the 
" bleacher and yell" type of athletics for the many gave 
way to universal participation in plays and games. 

So far as the little child is concerned, if we are to con- 
serve and cultivate his natural physique, we must needs 
exercise a good deal of patience with his restlessness and 
noise. It is true that both of these must be modified and 
harmonized with the other demands of lif e, but the greatest 
consideration should be used to avoid sacrificing his real 
bodily welfare in the process. It is safe to say that an 
education which tends to produce children who love to sit 
still rather than to romp and play is a fatal mistake. 
Certainly it must be clear that the active participation 
of father and mother in the joyful sports of childhood is 
one of the most powerful educative agencies to accom- 
plish the ends which we have been discussing. 

3. Love of Beauty. The pioneer was driven by the 
inexorable conditions of his existence to devote his atten- 
tion and energies to the practical affairs of life. This is 
true both of the individual and the race. Consequently, 
when intelligent critics of America tell us that we pay 
too little attention to the aesthetic, we need not deny or 



TASTES IO3 

apologize inasmuch as our history makes it clear that 
nothing else up to the present could be expected. What 
we should do, however, is to shape our education in such 
a way that the rising generation shall in this respect be 
superior to us who are now on the stage. We need to 
open our hearts to the truth that an essential part of lif e 
is the quiet, reposeful joy found in the contemplation and 
appreciation of beauty in every form. The ability to find 
happiness in beauty is one of the great assets of any life, 
and the familiar lines of Keats express a truth that is 
ethical no less than aesthetic : — 

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever : 
Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing." 

Moreover, few of the tasks of the educator are so delight- 
ful and so profitable, both to teacher and taught, as the 
endeavor to open the eager soul of childhood and youth 
to the priceless and beneficent power of beauty. 

First of all, for every reason comes the appreciation 
of the delights furnished free by the hand of nature. It 
a notorious fact that the majority of grown men and 
women are more or less blind to the beauties which he 
about them in their daily walks. It is no less true that 
an occasional individual finds pleasure and health-giving 
delight in these same sources. Here again the educator 



104 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

finds the indispensable ground for his work in a natural 
impulse. The little child who cannot yet talk shows 
unmistakable joy in bright colors, flowers, clouds, and 
dancing waves. It is a common sight to see little boys 
six or seven years old with their hands full of gay blos- 
soms which they have gathered in the woods. It is sad to 
realize that in most cases these same lads in a few years 
will have lost that source of joy and that to them the 
flowers will be no more than was the yellow primrose 
to Peter Bell. No more convincing argument can be 
found for the right of the child to have an aesthetic educa- 
tion than these powerful natural impulses of aesthetic joy. 
The duty of the parent and teacher is clear : simply from 
time to time, whenever opportunity offers, to direct the 
child's eye and mind toward the object of beauty that is 
before him. Such training can begin in infancy and be 
continued throughout developmental life ; by such quiet, 
unpretentious means a permanent trend may be given to 
the attention and interest of the mind, and so this source 
of life and satisfaction, which so often perishes from in- 
anition, may be preserved through youth into maturity 
and become a permanent element of the soul. 

Certainly those who dwell in regions of scenic beauty 
with mountains, lakes, streams, and forests are peculiarly 
fortunate in this respect ; we praise the parent who could 
actually find a motive for changing his place of residence 
in the desire to let his children grow up in a favored situa- 
tion in respect to natural beauty. However, any rural 
region offers sufficient possibility for the development of 



TASTES 105 

the love of natural beauty. Cloud scenery alone, which 
is as fine in the boundless plains of the Middle West as 
anywhere in the world, offers an almost limitless realm for 
the cultivation of the aesthetic sense. The beauty of 
familiar objects is everywhere to be enjoyed, and the child 
may easily be habituated to appreciate the forms and 
colors of flowers, the figures of crystals, and the grace of 
animals. 

We have said that the tastes in general should be whole- 
some and inexpensive. In these respects the love of na- 
ture takes first place. It tempts one out-of-doors into 
the fresh air, to take excursions on foot or horseback, or 
on the water. It carries us away from the beaten paths 
into the healthy solitude of woods and hills. It has 
power to soothe and heal the irritation and nerve 
strain of urban life, and in every way to contribute to 
soundness and sanity of body and soul. To all, except 
the unfortunate submerged tenth of our great cities, 
these pleasures are offered quite or almost free of charge, 
and fortunately municipal and civic progress are doing 
much to open the same joys to the poor by means of parks 
and playgrounds in the midst of our cities, and inexpen- 
sive excursions to seaside and country. It would seem 
that the opportunities for access to natural beauties are 
greater than the capacity of our people to experience these 
joys. The richness and value of life, both to the individ- 
ual and to the nation at large, can be wonderfully en- 
hanced if home and school will do their full duty in the 
cultivation of this taste. 



106 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

After the appreciation of nature comes logically a 
capacity to enjoy the products of human creative art. 
While we must give these a secondary place and empha- 
size the fact that the appreciation of nature is deeper 
and more fundamental, as well as more universal and 
accessible, nevertheless the cultivation of the appreci- 
ation of artificial beauty is a great end in itself and also 
a powerful agent in stimulating the taste for natural 
beauty. Moreover, creative art overcomes the limita- 
tions of time and space and opens to us the beautiful 
creations of remote ages and distant lands. It is doubt- 
less true, also, that the object of art has a certain aesthetic 
superiority over nature in that it is carefully selected : all 
irrelevant and inharmonious elements are excluded, and 
thus the picture or statue may make a peculiar and power- 
ful appeal to the aesthetic sense of the beholder. Cer- 
tainly no one who is to live in a civilized community, and 
particularly in a city, can afford to be without a fair de- 
gree of capacity to appreciate art. In these days when 
excellent reproductions of art can be obtained at slight 
cost, it is easy for every home to possess the essentials 
for a simple yet effective art education of the children. 
Only let the pictures be of unquestionable merit and the 
reproductions faithful. Happily, in this task the schools 
are showing the way ; and it has been abundantly proved 
that little children in the first grades of the elementary 
school are susceptible of a genuine love for beautiful pic- 
tures. Probably nowhere more than in these schools has 
it been shown that really good pictures do not wear out. 



TASTES 107 

In a certain schoolroom the children had money enough 
to buy a single picture ; the teacher hung in the room a 
copy of "The Gleaners" and told the children that the 
picture would be exchanged at the end of the month if 
they so desired ; at first the children had small interest in 
the picture ; as the month went on, however, the teacher 
took occasion from time to time to call their attention to 
the picture and talk to them about its meaning and 
beauty ; at the end of the month the class unanimously 
declined to allow the picture to be taken away. The ex- 
perience manifested two things, the absolute excellence 
of the picture itself and the full capacity of the child's 
soul to rise to an appreciation of genuine art. The thing 
of beauty had become to them a joy forever. 

Any argument to prove the power and value of music 
in human life would be impertinent. We need only to 
plead that it be given more place in the education of our 
children. The ancients not only recognized the power of 
music to touch the heart and affect the emotions for the 
moment, but they also ascribed to it a peculiar and pro- 
found influence over permanent character. While it is 
not the custom in modern times to lay stress upon this 
permanent influence of music, it must be said that noth- 
ing has been brought forward to disprove its existence. 
However, the claim of music to an important place in 
the education of children can be sufficiently established 
by its great and unique power to afford delight and di- 
version to the soul. The interest shown by savage races 



108 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

and little children in simple forms of music indicates 
clearly enough that a love of music is an organic part of 
human nature, and would naturally lead us to assume 
that musical culture is an indispensable part of a com- 
plete education. 

The method of culture in music is similar to that in art 
and other forms of aesthetic capacity : it consists in bring- 
ing the child within the reach and influence of the aesthetic 
stimulus. Let him from the earliest years hear good 
music sung or played ; at first the music should be of the 
simplest kinds, and as the child matures he will naturally 
gain the power to comprehend more complex and highly 
developed forms. The great thing is to let music be a 
regular and frequent part of his life so that the rudimen- 
tary powers of appreciation found in the child may have 
no opportunity to languish through disuse, but may grow 
and be confirmed into a permanent element in character. 

With reference to both music and art it should be noted 
that the capacity to appreciate these forms of beauty may 
be highly cultivated without the power to create. Com- 
paratively few children can or indeed should be highly 
educated in artistic or musical accomplishments. In both 
cases the training for the accomplishment includes long 
and tedious drill in mechanical processes. The instruc- 
tion is costly, and the study absorbs an enormous amount 
of the child's time and strength. A reasonable capacity 
to appreciate music and art, on the other hand, quite suf- 
fices to enrich life and exercise a wholesome influence upon 
character, and can be achieved with far less expense of 



TASTES IO9 

time and energy, and should be cultivated in every 
child. 

Two simple forms of accomplishment may well be rec- 
ommended for all children except the very few who are 
markedly deficient ; namely, singing and simple free-hand 
drawing. All good schools give training in these two 
arts, and the home can well cooperate in both. 

4. Good Reading. The modern world is so much 
concerned with books and periodicals that there is no 
need of laying stress upon cultivating the habit of read- 
ing. In fact, the chances are that the great majority of 
educated people read too much rather than too little. 
But the habit of reading is one thing and a taste for good 
reading is a very different thing. Unfortunately the busi- 
ness ideals which so largely dominate the publisher do not 
always minister to the development of good taste in the 
readers. The sentimental, the spectacular, that which 
amuses and tickles the fancy, the extraordinary, whether 
it be true or not — these characterize too much of the 
output of our printing-presses, and all of these character- 
istics tend to run to dangerous excess. Two great dan- 
gers result from this condition, — the actual corruption 
of the minds of youth by suggestive and immoral read- 
ing, and the loss of power to concentrate the mind on 
anything which calls for serious thought. 

The taste for good reading is inseparable from a taste 
for good thinking, and home culture must strive for both 
ends at once. It is not sufficient to provide good reading 
for the children in the home and to urge them to read it. 



IIO THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

To this must be added the active interest and participa- 
tion of the parents, manifested in their own reading and 
in the discussion of subjects in which they desire the 
children to become interested. 

It is a great mistake, of course, — which, however, very- 
few parents of this generation are at all likely to make, — 
to expect small children to take pleasure in mature litera- 
ture: education has come to recognize the legitimate 
place of children's literature, and fortunately a very large 
body of excellent reading for children is now available. 
It is not always so fully recognized that there is educa- 
tional value in everything the child reads, and that so 
long as the stories to which he devotes himself have noth- 
ing positively bad in them, he is likely to be benefited 
by the reading. Every page he reads is likely to add to 
his store of words and ideas, and the exercise of reading 
itself stimulates and increases the play and vigor of his 
mind. It need hardly be repeated here that the child 
who wants to read when he ought to be playing should 
be driven out of doors for the good of his body and soul. 

5. Some Dangers in ^Esthetic Education. It is prob- 
able that every bad habit involves a bad taste. Hence, 
what has been said about certain habits will throw light 
upon unhealthy tastes. The great weapon with which to 
fight these dangers is the filling of the child's life and soul 
with plenty of good, vigorous, wholesome activities and 
healthy tastes. It may be necessary, however, to use 
positive repression in some cases. The taste for tobacco 
and for gambling are two cases in point. American 



TASTES III 

morality condemns gambling throughout, and tobacco in 
boyhood and early youth. It is surely the duty of the 
parent to be vigilant and resolute in discovering and 
crushing out either of these two tastes in childhood or 
youth. The taste for tobacco is fortunately a very un- 
natural one, the first efforts to acquire it being usually 
accompanied by a strong physical reaction and probably 
some remorse ; if the father or mother can put in an 
influence at this point, the whole thing may be nipped in 
the bud. 

Another of the serious dangers in the development of 
the taste is the development of excessive fondness for 
certain things legitimate in themselves ; and here again 
parental vigilance must be the remedy. Some of the 
frequent forms of this evil are the taste for candy and 
sweets, for such amusements as cards and dancing, and for 
overfrequent attendance at theaters and entertainments. 
These excessive tastes tend to wasting of time and loss of 
interest in more important things, in some cases to ill 
health and debility and to the retardation of education 
and development. 

We have spoken frequently of aesthetic education, but 
have tried to make it clear that we do not refer to the 
kind of culture which leads to overfastidiousness and an 
affected contempt and dislike of everything simple and 
common. There are not a few unfortunate and misguided 
people who are ashamed to confess admiration for any- 
thing which can be enjoyed by the uninitiated. They 
despise all ordinary pictures, all simple and unpretentious 



112 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

music. They demand absolute perfection in technique, 
and so can find no satisfaction except in the performance 
of a virtuoso. The chief purpose of aesthetic education 
is to increase the capacity for aesthetic enjoyment; the 
development of the hypercritical and fastidious atti- 
tude, on the other hand, decreases the total capacity for 
aesthetic enjoyment. It cannot be denied, of course, that 
culture in either art or music will inevitably modify the 
range of appreciation and render one dissatisfied with 
some forms of art which previously pleased. Only let 
it not be forgotten that this is an incident of aesthetic 
culture, and not its essence. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Personal Ideal 

"What am I going to be" is a question that early fas- 
cinates the young human being; about it center much 
thought, many yearnings, hopes, fears, and, best of all, 
many earnest resolves. It is the natural offspring of the 
maturing or " growing up" instinct, previously noted. 
The question in its most conscious and definite form 
usually refers to vocation, " Shall I be farmer, or lawyer, 
or merchant, or physician ? " But it also has a far deeper 
meaning and content, "What sort of man or woman 
shall I be ; what kind of life shall I propose and hew out ? " 
The answer the youth frames to this latter question is his 
personal ideal, and will exercise a potent influence upon 
the development of his character and the direction of his 
conduct. Toward it the growing soul strives, day after 
day, year after year ; its outlines, first existing only in the 
imagination of the heart, gradually, almost impercep- 
tibly impress themselves on the soul and body, and mani- 
fest themselves in the outer life; "As a man thinketh in 
his heart, so is he." 

The personal ideal distinguishes man from lower crea- 
tures; and its perfection and power mark the high and 
full development of humanity. Very early it becomes 
i 113 



114 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

the directing influence in self -culture, — which is by far 
the most important part of education; all truly higher 
education is self -education ; the mission of all training 
from without is to stimulate and aid and guide the youth 
to take charge of his own culture and career. Conscious 
education is always directed by some sort of an ideal: 
the school, the home, national education are laboring 
to mold men and women into certain general forms of 
excellence and virtue; the personal ideal is the image 
that the child and youth forms of his own possible self. 

Self-respect is the very cement of character, without 
which character will not form nor stand ; a personal ideal 
is the only possible foundation for self-respect, without 
which self-respect degenerates into vanity or conceit, or is 
lost entirely, its place being taken by worthlessness and 
the consciousness of worthlessness ; and that is the end of 
all character. It is often said that if we do not respect 
ourselves no one else will respect us; this is rather a 
dangerous way to put it ; let us rather say that if we are 
not worthy of our own respect we cannot claim the respect 
of others. True self-respect is a matter of being and 
never of mere seeming. As Paulsen says, "It is vanity 
that desires first of all to be seen and admired, and then, 
if possible, really to be something ; whereas proper self- 
esteem desires first of all to be something, and then, if 
possible, to have its worth recognized." 

The personal ideal must have power over our lives, 
else it is not an ideal at all, but only an idea. The youth 
must not merely dream of strength, of wisdom, of skill 



THE PERSONAL IDEAL 115 

and power, of honor and righteousness, of nobility and 
generosity, — he must resolve to attain them. He must 
see himself pursuing and achieving, and be inspired and 
energized by the vision. Such a vision of power is the per- 
sonal ideal. 

A full account of the personal ideal would necessarily 
cover every part of human life. It is quite clear also there 
would be the greatest variation in different individuals. 
For the purpose of education, however, it is worth while to 
emphasize certain elements which should be found in every 
case. We shall speak first of the bodily ideal. 

1. The Bodily Ideal. We have already spoken in pre- 
vious chapters of the inborn tendency to bodily activity 
and of the exhilaration and delight to be f ound in physi- 
cal exercise and of the habit and taste which should be 
developed from these sources. It remains to add a con- 
scious interest and rational pride in developing and main- 
taining the highest degree of bodily perfection. Every boy 
and every girl should grow up with the ideal of a healthy, 
clean, and efficient body. He should be taught the in- 
timate relation of the body and soul, in that the soul is 
absolutely dependent upon the body both for its knowl- 
edge of the outer universe through the senses, and for its 
power to make itself felt in the world through external 
activity. As the child's mind gradually rises to fuller un- 
derstanding, he should be thoroughly imbued with that 
great truth which is expressed figuratively in the apostle's 
words, " Your bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit." 
The cleanliness of the body, of course, should go farther 



Il6 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

than the mere use of soap and water, and should include 
the abhorrence of everything which could in any way 
pollute the body or its organs. In this way cleanliness 
is bound up with health, and both naturally lead to 
the third element in the bodily ideal, that of vigor and 
efficiency. 

Fortunately the ideal of physical perfection has a 
powerful appeal to every normal child and youth ; the 
boy especially is extremely susceptible to this motive; 
he admires strength and agility in others and longs for it in 
himself. As already noted, the great fault of our educa- 
tion in this respect is that it trains the many to be content 
with admiring the physical perfection of the few, and 
neglecting it or despairing of it in themselves. The very 
children who most need stimulation in their physical life 
are comparatively neglected, and are allowed to fall lower 
and lower, not only in their bodily health and strength, but 
also in their hopes and ambitions for physical perfection. 

It need hardly be repeated here that the abundant and 
healthy physical life, with the exhilaration and exuberant 
delight of bodily strength and vigor, forms one of the 
most powerful safeguards against many of the tempta- 
tions and dangers that threaten boys and young men. 
The bodily ideal is an implacable foe to all forms of vice, 
and especially to those that more easily beset the adoles- 
cent youth. This ideal involves keeping one's self, as it 
were, in training. The true educational aim would be to 
give to every boy and girl something of the sense of re- 
ponsibility for keeping in training that is felt so strongly 



THE PERSONAL IDEAL 117 

by the members of an athletic team. Such a sense would 
conduce not merely to higher physical development, but 
would radiate its good influence into all parts of life. 

The poet Browning, himself throughout life an exam- 
ple of bodily vigor and enthusiasm, has given us a noble 
eulogy of the bodily ideal in a passage from "Saul," 
with which we may well sum up the theme : — 

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigor ! No spirit feels waste. 
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. 
Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up to rock, 
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver 

shock 
Of the plunge in a pooFs living water, the hunt of the bear, 
And the sultriness showing the Hon is couched in his lair, 
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust 

divine, 
And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of 

wine, 
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell 
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. 
How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy ! " 

2. The Intellectual Ideal. Next comes the ideal of 
good thinking. Abraham Lincoln tells somewhere that 
as a boy when he met an obscure or ambiguous sentence 
in his reading it threw him into a sort of rage. The fact 
is that this was simply a form of instinct for clear think- 
ing which is found in every child and manifests itself 
abundantly to the perception of the good teacher. Far 
more important than any particular piece of knowledge, 



Il8 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

than geography or arithmetic or spelling, is this love of 
clearness in our mental life and instinctive hatred of con- 
fusion and obscurity. Let the child early learn to know 
what he knows clearly and definitely, and as soon as 
possible let him learn also how he knows it. Both 
teacher and parent can minister in the early years of 
intelligence to the culture of this intellectual ideal. 

The great intellectual need of men and women in the 
outer world is not so much more knowledge as it is better 
knowledge and better thinking. There is much phil- 
osophy in the humorist's remark, "It was never my igno- 
rance that done me up, but the things I know'd that 
wasn't so." The great enemies of intellectual life are su- 
perstitition, gullibility, and fallacious reasoning. A mere 
knowledge of facts, important as that is, is no safeguard 
against these. A conscious desire and resolve to think 
clearly is the true remedy. 

It need hardly be said that this characteristic is pecul- 
iarly important in the citizen of a republic, and particu- 
larly so in this complex modern world. Man is engaged 
in a strenuous endeavor to understand himself and the 
world in which he lives. The problems that confront civ- 
ilized man to-day, especially in connection with indus- 
trial and social problems, will task the best intelligence 
of the future. Our national success will depend largely 
upon the development of a generation of men and women 
who have formed a love and habit of clear thinking and 
who can do their part in solving these problems. 

3. The Ideal of Honor. It would perhaps seem nat- 



THE PERSONAL IDEAL 119 

ural after speaking of the bodily ideal and the intellect- 
ual ideal to name as a third in the series the moral ideal. 
We have purposely avoided this term because we are 
dealing with children, to whom the word "moral" usu- 
ally conveys either no clear idea or a rather unpleasant 
one. That is, to the boy the word moral is likely to 
mean either something very vague and obscure or else 
certain prohibitions and negations which hinder him from 
doing what he would like and not infrequently cause him 
to be punished. We have used instead a word which has 
a peculiar appeal to the heart of youth. Here, as else- 
where, or rather more than anywhere else, it is absolutely 
necessary to find the road to the heart. What we are 
seeking is an ideal, and an ideal, as we have already 
emphasized, is no mere notion or conception, and above 
all never can be a repugnant or unpleasant thing, but 
must always have the power to charm and fascinate the 
one into whose character it is to enter. 

Both history and romance, as well as everyday life, 
give abundant illustrations of the power of what men 
call honor. At the command of honor men and women, 
youths, and even children will dare and endure the ut- 
most. One of the most striking things in school life is 
that schoolboy honor which will lead a pupil to obstinate 
defiance of authority and unhesitating endurance of pun- 
ishment in order to preserve what he considers good faith 
with his fellows. Fortunately the home is seldom trou- 
bled by these strange conflicts between the moral sense of 
childhood and the moral code of the adult. 



120 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

No one can deny the difficulty which this conflict in 
children and youth causes in school life, but it must still 
be said that this troublesome sense of honor is the stock 
upon which must be grafted the best things in character. 
The youth's sense of honor has the two clear indispensable 
elements of character: it has dynamic power and it 
means right. To ignore it is to neglect the most precious 
spring of righteousness, to quarrel with it or attempt to 
crush it is fatal to all educational success. The duty of 
both parent and teacher is clear: on the one hand to 
cherish and guard this native root of honor with the 
utmost patience and sympathy, and on the other hand 
to enlighten it by all means in our power. 

This sense of honor is the sense of right. It is the 
soul's instinctive love for the good, the true, the com- 
mendable, and its instinctive scorn of the base, mean, and 
vile. The road to perfection is through two main pro- 
cesses. First, the intelligence must be opened to a larger 
view : the child sees and feels only what is immediately 
about him : he has a keen sense of his own interests, and 
of the affairs and notions of his playmates, but little 
sympathy for the standards and ideals of mature life. 
These juvenile interests for the time being direct and 
control his sense of honor and right: it is the duty of 
education to open his eyes to the interests of others, es- 
pecially of older persons and those remote from him. 
The boys who see no harm in stealing a gate on Hal- 
lowe'en, or in breaking windows "for a lark," may be 
brought to take a new view when they are impressed with 



THE PERSONAL IDEAL 121 

the annoyance and hardship which is caused to other 
persons. 

In the second place, the child and youth fall easily and 
almost universally into a confusion between that false 
honor which cares only what another thinks or says, and 
the true personal honor which cares first for what we are. 
It is too true that many a man who would resent with a 
blow the epithet of "thief" or "liar" will lie and steal 
in secret apparently without a qualm of conscience. The 
true root of honor demands reality and hates shams. 
The youth should be taught to abhor and reject in his 
own heart everything which he would resent in an accu- 
sation made by another. He should learn not to tolerate 
in his own inner consciousness what he would fear or 
blush to have known to friends or foes. This is the 
sense of personal honor that dominates and molds char- 
acter and that endures the heaviest stress of life. 

4. The Pride of the Workman. A very plain and prac- 
tical element in the personal ideal is a just pride in the 
work of one's hands. Probably no one ever saw a com- 
petent skilled workman in any calling who did not look 
upon the finished product of his labor and pains with lov- 
ing eyes and some warming of the heart. A considerable 
part of most lives must be spent in work : and in a 
democratic state of society no one can measure up to 
the full standards of character unless he possesses effi- 
ciency. The lack of this element of the personal ideal 
produces the sloven and the bungler, its full develop- 
ment stimulates effort and improvement and so creates 



122 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

skill, and besides that it cheers and dignifies the long 
hours and years of toil ; it is the most potent means to 
turn drudgery into happy employment. Both home and 
school can find abundant and easy opportunity to nour- 
ish this excellent quality. 

5. Some Dangers of the Personal Ideal. It will have 
already risen in the mind of the reader that there are 
serious perils along the way that we have been describ- 
ing. The bodily ideal may tend to produce the ex- 
treme type of athlete, or physical culturist, or even the 
scented exquisite, whose thoughts are largely devoted 
to immaculate physical perfection. The intellectual 
ideal may produce the pedant, the wiseacre, or the bore. 
The ideal of honor may tend to produce on the one hand 
the haughty cavalier, or duelist, or on the other hand the 
extreme puritan or pietist. Emphasis on the personal 
ideal in general may produce egotism or even selfishness. 

The fact is that all of these are faults of defect and the 
remedy in every case is fullness and roundness of devel- 
opment to prevent the excess of any individual element 
of character. The personal ideal itself must contain in 
harmonious proportion all its necessary elements, and 
the wholesome personal ideal thus made up must be 
balanced by interest in others and a sense that after all 
the perfection of one's own personality is justified only by 
the service that one may render to his fellow men, a con- 
ception which forms the basis of the next higher region in 
the elements of character, that of the social ideal. 

6. Modesty. It will easily be seen that modesty, that 



THE PERSONAL IDEAL 1 23 

choice excellence in character, is immediately connected 
with the personal ideal. The essence of modesty is not 
contempt for one's self, but rather a reasonable estimate 
of one's own worth, sobered and modified by several 
clear considerations: first, the recognition of the worth 
of others, always remembering that being naturally prone 
to overestimate our own value and underestimate the 
value of others, we should be distrustful and critical of 
the favorable opinions which we form concerning our- 
selves and of the unfavorable opinions which we form 
concerning others. Secondly, modesty is encouraged by 
comparison of what we have attained with what we 
might have accomplished or still hope to achieve; in 
this process the possession of a high personal ideal, so far 
from tending to vanity or conceit, is the strongest basis 
of genuine modesty. 



CHAPTER VII 

Conscience 

The personal ideal in a strict sense relates to the in- 
dividual's attitude toward himself and his own individual 
credit and honor : it consists in his being true to himself. 
A little later we shall have to consider the relations that 
each of us bears to his fellows, our social relations, as we 
call them. Now these are separate only in our discussion 
of them, whereas in real character and life they run into 
one another and blend inseparably ; neither can ever be 
richly and fully developed if the other is weak or defective. 
Between them, and pervading both, is the element that we 
call conscience, or the sense of right and wrong and of 
obligation to do the right. 

Wordsworth calls duty the ' daughter of the voice of 
God ' ; Kant describes it as a categorical imperative that 
says to every human soul, Thus must thou do ! Froebel 
speaks of an eternal law that hovers as it were above and 
between two persons who come into relation with each 
other, rebuking when necessary the inclinations and 
desires of one or both of them, and dictating with author- 
ity what both shall do. The philosophers differ almost 
infinitely in theories of conscience, and both its origin and 
its validity are subtle and perplexing questions; but 

124 



CONSCIENCE 125 

human experience, in history and literature and in com- 
mon life, has no doubt of its existence and its mighty im- 
port in human affairs and the progress of the race. 

Savages, we are told, have little sense of right and 
wrong, and that little far from agreeing with our stand- 
ards. The little child beginning to talk and walk is prob- 
ably quite devoid of the moral sense, and is led altogether 
by impulse and spontaneous interests. Of course he is 
not therefore immoral, but simply nonmoral ; he is not 
bad, nor is he good ; he is yet to become one or the other, 
or, rather, some of both. 

Leaving theory and debated points aside as much as 
possible, let us see what we can agree upon as to the be- 
ginnings of the sense of ought in the child's mind. First, 
it rises into consciousness through conflict between the 
child's desires or impulses with the order of things in 
which he finds himself, — usually with the will of his 
parents. The power of his elders and his fear of them 
create at first a must; this is probably the necessary 
first step in his moral development. It is the stage in 
which his native impulses are checked and regulated by 
an external law ; sometimes he resents and rebels ; some- 
times he yields, more or less cheerfully ; but still the law 
is quite outside of him, as is shown by his tendency to 
break it when he finds himself alone or thinks that none 
of the representatives of the law can know of his deeds. 
The wise parent will not be troubled or discouraged by 
this stage of growth, but will accept it as natural and as 
leading to something higher. 



126 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

Authority and discipline, firm, uniform, dignified, 
kindly, are the means of culture of this sense of must; 
the chief practical maxim is to be quite firm without the 
least unnecessary violence or irritation ; suaviter in modo, 
fortiter in re is the true rule, — let the manner be as gentle 
and agreeable as possible, but see the thing through to 
the end. 

From must to ought is a process of internalization ; that 
is, the child gradually adopts the law into his own 
heart, makes it a part of his permanent ideas, and sub- 
mits his own native impulses, previously dominant, to the 
authority of the law. Every normal child proves the 
existence of a natural tendency to do just this very thing ; 
very early he begins to surprise his elders by doing, upon 
occasion at least, quite willingly and sometimes with an 
air of importance or self-approbation, things that until 
now he had to be compelled to do either by force or au- 
thority. Especially does he take great delight in virtu- 
ous acts that for the moment fit in with his own plans : 
so young do we begin to suffer from mild hypocrisy; 
then he is fond of compounding for sins he is personally 
inclined to, by condemning the misdemeanors of his lit- 
tle brother or playmate in the most righteous indignation. 

It is hard to doubt the universal presence, in very early 
years, of a profound and somewhat mysterious reinforce- 
ment of the ideas of right and wrong from the depths of 
the child's soul. Many of us can remember the almost 
intolerable pain and darkness of soul that came with the 
sense of guilt, when we had done something that we knew 



CONSCIENCE 127 

to be contrary to the will of father or mother, or to the 
established order of the house. The depth and power 
of this feeling is probably nature's index of its vital im- 
portance in later development and in the affairs of human 
life. This element in the soul of the child furnishes the 
dynamic or driving force of the adult conscience ; it is the 
root of the quality which marked Lincoln so strongly that 
one said of him, "He knew no fear except the fear of 
doing wrong." 

Naturally the sense of law arises through the child's 
contact and relations with those about him. Thus duty 
is a distinctly social matter, and will be much illuminated 
by a consideration of social relations and f eelings in gen- 
eral, in the next chapter. The child soon begins to feel 
the force of the principle that is best expressed in the 
Golden Rule ; it comes home in a very effective way 
when he finds that the best way to get others to do what 
you want them to do for your benefit is to be willing to be 
equally con3iderate and accommodating toward them. So 
develops the basic idea of all ethical truth, that each one 
must conduct himself in a way that would work out well 
as a rule for all; and so gradually caprice and whim, 
impulse and desire, and all the irrational and unorgan- 
ized elements of the child's will may be subordinated to 
the law of justice. 

Conscience has two sides, the feeling of right and wrong, 
and intelligent judgment between the two : both of these 
sides must be cultivated in fair proportion to each other. 
First, the tenderness of the child's heart regarding wrong, 



128 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

his aversion to it, and the pangs of remorse he feels after 
breaking the law as he knows it, must be cherished and 
conserved. Above all, he must not get hardened against 
repentance by being constantly in conflict with law and 
constantly made to feel that he is a wrongdoer : hence the 
law laid upon him must be tempered to his small strength, 
so that under ordinary circumstances he may have 
strength to resist temptation; then guilt and the pain 
of remorse will be rare and exceptional, and will keep 
their power. Whenever guilt usurps a large place in 
the child's consciousness it tends to lose its sharpness, — 
and what was first hated as soon as seen, the little man, 
like his elders, is apt to " first endure, then pity, then 
embrace." The stings of conscience, like all other pun- 
ishments, fall into impotence as soon as they cease to 
be rare and unusual. Require of the child little, and 
that comparatively easy, and draw an unmistakable line 
about that requirement; so may the sense of law and 
obligation retain its most essential quality, that of the im- 
perative. As strength and knowledge grow, the demands 
upon the conscience may be enlarged and heightened. 

The other side of conscience is moral intelligence to 
know what is right. This grows by the same processes 
as any other form of intelligence, — by experience, in- 
struction, counsel, and above all by reflection and in- 
dependent thought. The first great agency in this 
development is the common life of children with each 
other, and in a less degree, with their elders. But ex- 
perience alone is as poor a teacher for children as for 



CONSCIENCE 129 

adults : its lessons stand in need of constant interpreta- 
tion and explanation, and this must be provided 
largely by parents and other educators. The boy who 
has been "sent to Coventry'' by his playmates may have 
gained for himself nothing but anger and grief from the 
experience ; he needs to be shown that it was his refusal 
or failure to play the game according to the rules that 
caused his expulsion ; and that if all behaved as he had 
done the whole game would be ruined. Sometimes a 
child that is quite stuck in the attempt to unravel such a 
situation, and can do nothing but grieve or sulk, may 
need only the slightest hint to set him on his rational way 
to the true solution and to a new perception of social law. 
Similarly in the child's relations to elders : their require- 
ments, especially their prohibitions, often seem like mere 
tyranny, with no discoverable purpose except to dash 
his pleasure and check his enthusiasm; this is a fact 
that no parent or teacher should ever lose sight of. 
Yet the requirement has a clear, rational justification, and 
intends the child's own good; let this be patiently and 
lovingly expounded to him, just as fast and as fully as his 
mental capacity permits. Take him into your confidence, 
and thus help him up to a new step in his growth both 
moral and intellectual. Nothing here said is intended to 
contradict the practical truth that children must learn 
to do many things against their natural impulses before 
they can comprehend the reasons for the compulsion; 
and they must often do immediately something which 
would take time to explain ; hence a part of the essential 



130 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

training in obedience, as we have pointed out, is prompt 
compliance with commands without demanding to know 
why. Success in obtaining such implicit obedience is 
greatly favored by the fullest consideration of the child's 
growing intelligence concerning conduct. 

The modest but invaluable virtue of reliability may 
perhaps be set down as a form of conscience; it is the 
sense of ought that holds a man at his post or his task 
when ease beckons or hardship and danger try to drive 
him from it, — and that is reliability. Such a man is 
also said to be responsible, — he can be counted on to 
answer for himself on points of duty, simply because he 
has an inward monitor that checks him up even more 
sharply than do the rules of occupation, business, or 
social life. But reliability or responsibility finds its per- 
fection only when reenf orced by the virtues of strength of 
character, which are to be discussed in a later chapter. 

We have said that development in conscience is a pro- 
cess of internalizing ; the must is a force from without, 
the ought is from within, — or perhaps from above or 
beyond the individual soul ; at least it does not come from 
any visible outward authority. The sense of ought is 
indissolubly blended with three great motives which are 
mentioned elsewhere in our discussion: first, with the 
sense of personal honor, as already said. Second, with the 
sense of social obligation, of which we shall speak in the 
next chapter: by far the greatest and most powerful 
commands of the voice of duty concern our relations to 
others ; probably none of them could possibly be limited 



CONSCIENCE 131 

strictly to our individual selves, — which indeed are after 
all only an abstraction and not real entities. Third, 
duty tends always, as character broadens, to be dis- 
solved into love ; the noblest souls, saints and martyrs and 
heroes of self-sacrifice, those who do their duty most 
abundantly, are least conscious of any compulsion, but 
act in joyful freedom, through love of their fellows and 
the absorbing desire to do them good. And what is writ 
so large in these supreme souls is a universal experience 
in the life of man : the little child does many things first 
from absolute compulsion, then from fear or dread, later 
from a coercing sense of duty, often sadly against his own 
preference; later he will do these same things, and far 
greater and more self-sacrificing ones, in complete freedom, 
with every counter impulse quite abolished, and with a 
heart full of joy in the deed and the good it is intended 
to work out. Every act that can be transferred from the 
realm of duty to that of love is a step upward toward 
that perfect inner freedom that is the goal of man's moral 
evolution. This of course is one of the peculiar messages 
of Christianity; when Plato in the famous myth of the 
men in the cave seeks to send the educated back to do 
their duty in enlightening their fellows still in darkness, he 
finds no other motive except legislative enactment and 
civil authority ; and those whom he must thus coerce 
are the choicest spirits of his commonwealth; how dif- 
ferent the moral attitude of the great apostle when he 
explains his boundless self-sacrifice by saying that "the 
love of Christ constrains him." 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Social Ideal 

Education may be briefly summed up as the process of 
enhancing the value of the individual and binding him 
to the race. Thus far in our study of the essentials of 
character we have dealt mainly with individual worth, 
touching nevertheless frequently, either expressly or by 
implication, upon social relations. Now we turn defi- 
nitely to the social relation ; we need not be surprised if 
we find here constant reference to the elements of in- 
dividual character, and come to realize that individual 
worth and social character are inseparably linked and 
cannot approach perfection except as they develop side 
by side. It ought also to become plain that all morality 
worth the name is based upon social relations, and really 
consists in right thinking and right conduct toward those 
with whom we in any way come in contact. 

While the social feelings show themselves at the very 
earliest period of life and never cease to grow under normal 
conditions, yet they rise into striking prominence in the 
period of early adolescence, and we shall therefore have 
that period primarily in mind in this chapter. 

From the beginning of our discussion we have been 
gradually rising from the instinctive and mechanical 

132 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL I33 

strata of character, such as native tendencies, disposition, 
habit, into the higher realms of conscious and deliberate 
life. The social ideal is more than any previous element 
imbued with consciousness, and in dealing with it we 
shall find feeling and instinct constantly rising into 
thought and reason. It would be impossible to isolate 
them even in discussion, and in the actual development 
they grow side by side in intimate union. This social 
development and culture we shall consider under three 
heads : first, certain great truths that underlie all social 
relations and therefore all truly human life : next, social 
intelligence, or an understanding of the details of the 
social situations in which we are to live, so far as we need 
to know these details in order to know what is right and 
what is wrong in our social conduct; and, third, the 
widening of our native impulse of affection to take in all 
the children of men, as far as we enter into relations with 
them in any way whatsoever. 

1. Basic Truths of Human Life. 1 The deepest of all 
truths in human life is the essentially social nature of 
man: that "no man liveth unto himself/' but that, to 
use another phrase from the same writer, "we are all 
members one of another." These are no mere figures of 
speech, but are statements of fact; he who lives unto 
himself ceases to be a man and lapses into a mere ani- 
mal in human form; in so far as any human individ- 
ual cuts himself off from his fellows, just so far does 

1 See " The High School's Cure of Souls," Educational Review, April, 
1908, pp. 366-372. 



134 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

he fall below the perfect standard of humanity. Let 
any one try the experiment of turning his attention to his 
own inner life and stripping away all that is social in its 
nature and origin : all memories and feelings concerning 
parents, friends, books, civic and national life, all that in 
any way comes from others. What is left? Certainly 
not the soul of a man or woman, but at best some poor, 
blind, obscure, subhuman consciousness. 

Equally true is it that we constantly touch each other's 
lives : my deeds and my fate affect you, and yours affect 
me, inevitably and profoundly. Most deeply is this true 
of all deeds and experiences that are felt as distinctly 
moral, and as springing from character or bearing upon it. 
Crime and virtue alike radiate their influence upon those 
in any way bound to the doer ; fortune and disaster never 
fall upon the immediate victim alone, but often mean as 
much or even more to some one attached to him. 

But all this, while perhaps always a profitable theme, 
needs no long exposition to men and women who have 
lived and have reflected on life. The child, on the con- 
trary, is surprisingly blind to it. One of his most char- 
acteristic expressions is "I don't care!" in regard to the 
wishes, requests, opinions, and even welfare of others. 
Moreover, he is prone to think himself independent of the 
help and sympathy of those about him, except, indeed, 
so far as the more material needs are concerned. The 
small boy reading " Robinson Crusoe," — or, still better, 
" Swiss Family Robinson," with its comfortable and 
untroubled flow, — dreams with unalloyed delight of 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL 135 

being cast upon a desert island, where he might escape 
all the tedious and monotonous details of home and school 
life, and revel in the outdoor activities that appeal so 
strongly to his boyish heart. Crusoe's passionate yearn- 
ing to escape from the island and return to home and 
friends the lad simply cannot understand ; he would de- 
sire nothing so much as just to stay there. Now there 
is nothing unnatural in all this ; if our boy should some- 
how be actually separated from home and parents even 
for a few hours and in a far less trying place than Crusoe's 
island, his poor little heart would be almost broken. 
That very feeling is the spring or source which is to lead 
naturally, with proper guidance and enlightenment, to 
the full ripeness of social intelligence and sympathy. 
But the guidance and enlightenment cannot be dispensed 
with. 

A very simple illustration may be taken from a frequent 
occurrence in school life, and the case is one that will 
enter into the experience of every school principal, es- 
pecially in the high school. A lad of fourteen or fifteen 
wants to leave school ; why ? 'He wants to go to work/ 
or 'he doesn't like school,' or any one of half a dozen other 
reasons, — none of them, by the way, in themselves 
blameworthy. "What do your father and mother think 
about it?" "Well, they want me to go to school; 
Father says he wants me to go through high school and go 
to college." All this with many variations in various 
cases. "How will your father and mother feel if you 
insist on quitting school ?" As he will honestly tell you, 



I36 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

this simple question has not entered the boy's head, — 
he has been too much absorbed by the hot ambitions and 
eager desires of youth. Yet he only needs a word to set 
him thirfking in a new and vital direction. For whether 
the conversation, of which we have given just a hint, 
keeps the lad in school or not is a minor consideration 
(although the writer has known more than one case in 
which it did) ; far more important is its almost inevitable 
influence in helping the lad to take an upward step in his 
feeling and comprehension of the basic conditions of 
human life. The thought that his conduct and his wel- 
fare must inevitably enrich or impoverish the lives of those 
nearest and dearest to him, — this is clear, and may work 
great good in his life and character ; and, better, it may 
easily start a train of thought and feeling that may deepen 
his whole social nature. 1 

The most important point in the foregoing illustration 
is the fact that the incident in the boy's life might easily 
have passed over without stirring a ripple on the surface 
of his social consciousness; indeed, it might even have 
been so treated by both home and school as to blunt the 
boy's feeling toward others and hinder the opening of his 
social intelligence. Home and school life are full of oc- 
casions for the teaching of social interdependence and re- 
sulting social duty. History and literature also abound 
with examples of this basic principle of life ; but through 
it all the child is very much in the condition of him who 

1 See a wonderful passage in Rousseau's "Emile," pp. 238-240 (Payne's 
translation, Apple ton, 1901). 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL 137 

read the Scriptures, but could not understand, for "no 
man explained it to him." And yet we dare assert that 
for his own fullness of life, and for his usefulness to his 
fellows, no element of character is more essential than a 
profound and all-pervading sense of this great truth, 
that we are indeed ( members one of another, ' and cannot, 
if we would, live unto ourselves. 

The second great truth of human life is the debt of 
the individual to the community and the race; for from 
them he receives life itself, and all that makes that life 
worth while. The educative form of this truth is the 
debt of the young to their elders and to the past, and 
accordingly we consider it in this light. Childhood re- 
ceives from the elder generation the most lavish gifts 
that life knows anything about. Born helpless, and 
dependent for years, the young human being would be 
an intolerable burden to be inevitably cast off and perish, 
were it not for the redeeming element of parental love 
and devotion. Neither is the motive of parenthood by 
any means confined to actual fathers and mothers, nor 
restricted in its application to children according to 
the flesh; rather is it racial and spiritual: all normal 
grown men and women are moved to concern themselves 
on occasion for the welfare, and especially the happy 
development, of children or youth. The sacrifice and 
devotion of the home are supplemented by the nurture 
and education bestowed freely, and in the main gladly, 
by the community. 

Strangely, as it may seem at first glance, yet in fact 



138 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

inevitably, the child has by nature no conception of this 
second great social truth : it is perhaps even less likely 
to dawn upon him spontaneously than the first. Especially 
as he feels strong upon him the sense of maturing powers 
— in early adolescence, and when he begins to grasp a 
man's work in the world — is he likely to think of the 
world as his legitimate possession, and upon whatever he 
can seize, in the form of property, power, privilege, or 
pleasures, as his fair booty. The attitude of most young 
men toward money is a familiar case: few indeed dis- 
tinguish between getting and earning, or concern them- 
selves seriously over the question whether they are ren- 
dering a fair and honorable equivalent in service for what 
they receive in money and the things that money buys. 
Too often they behave as if they really believed the 
miserable fallacy of "The world owes me a living," instead 
of realizing that up to date they are deeply in debt to 
family, school, church, and state, for years of benefits 
without any return on their part. 

In many cases the child grows through youth into man- 
hood and never, until he has children of his own, does he 
get a glimmer of appreciation of the almost boundless 
devotion and self-denial involved even in very imperfect 
discharge of the duties of parenthood. And recognition of 
the rather more obscure social debt — the debt to the 
community for free institutions, education, general cul- 
ture and progress — often never comes, but the individ- 
ual ends his life without the touch of this great unifying 
and stimulating conception. 



, THE SOCIAL IDEAL 139 

In this matter we might well take a lesson from the an- 
cestor worship so frequently found in so-called heathen re- 
ligions ; for the debt of youth is of course to those who have 
gone before, beginning with the immediate parents and 
elders still living and working, and running back through 
all the generations of the past which have labored for the 
elevation of the race or the community. Yet probably 
few of us, youth or adults, have any real sense of owing 
any thing personally to Washington or Lincoln, to Pat- 
rick Henry or Horace Mann, to say nothing of John 
Robinson and Miles Standish, or Socrates and Epictetus. 

We have used the word debt, but it must be clear that 
there is nothing slavish or depressing in the indebtedness 
involved. It is purely a debt of honor on both sides: 
parents and elders give freely, hoping for no recompense 
to themselves; they give because they love, and they 
love to give, and find their best joy in loving service and 
tender nurture of the younger generation. So the feeling 
of debt on the part of the youth is rightly one of joyful 
gratitude, and enthusiastic resolve to live worthy of the 
benefits received freely; the motive is not compulsion, 
but rather noblesse oblige in its finest form. 

All this leads us most naturally to the third great 
ethical idea — the ideal of service. " Freely ye have re- 
ceived; freely give." The past pours out its treasures 
for us : it is for us to pass on the benefits to the future. 
Thus each man and each generation is a link in the 
eternal unity of the human race, receiving the light and 
power of life through heredity and education and pass- 



140 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

ing it on through parental devotion and varied benefi- 
cent activity. 

The ideal of service, based first on a grateful sense of 
benefit received, is reenforced by the sense of honorable 
obligation, which springs into ready flame in the heart of 
youth. The lad would be stung to the quick if accused 
of shirking in the football game or the tasks of the summer 
camp ; the same sense of honor is the strongest force in 
social, economic, and civil or political duty. Let the 
unearned dollar or the undeserved preferment be scorned 
and resented as are the imputations of shirking the obli- 
gations of the common occupations of boyhood. 

Finally, the ideal of grateful service as the only honor- 
able return for benefits received should have power just 
in proportion to those benefits: it should appeal most 
powerfully to the most favored. First, one is tempted 
to say, to those who have inherited wealth ; and yet one 
feels little hope or confidence in the appeal. The truth is 
that the mere inheritance of wealth is seldom a real bene- 
fit, and more often paves the downward path for the in- 
dividual and the family. Doubtless such inheritance is 
potentially an advantage, and constitutes a great obliga- 
tion ; but as a matter of fact it will usually cause degen- 
eration in the holder and loss of all social usefulness unless 
it is accompanied by a high degree of the right kind of 
culture and spiritual training; accordingly we pass to 
those in general who have enjoyed the privilege of higher 
education, — whether rich or not in this world's goods ; 
on them, above all others, lies the debt of youth, and the 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL 141 

obligation of service in return. No inheritance so surely 
springs from unselfish devotion in the past as a good edu- 
cation: a man may gather money for his own narrow 
and selfish satisfaction, and then drop it grudgingly out 
of his death-stricken grasp into the hands of heirs for 
whom he cares nothing or whom he even hates. But the 
effort and sacrifice that have built up the possibilities of 
higher education, laboring through all the ages of progress 
toward that end, have been inspired by the most unselfish 
motives known to the human heart. Education is essen- 
tially altruistic — its genius is most completely expressed 
in the words of the Greatest Teacher: "I am come that 
they might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly." 

As a matter of fact, higher education exhibits a vast 
amount of indifference to these obligations and not a little 
flagrant ingratitude : for the latter, consider the cases of 
men who have received the most liberal education from the 
generosity of the state, including often both general cul- 
ture and professional training, and then have turned the 
sharpened weapons thus acquired against the very com- 
munities that had fostered their growth. Yet these are 
far less important to our present consideration than the 
vast number of well meaning and honorable men and 
women who go out from higher institutions simply un- 
conscious and unthinking, because the idea of a special 
social obligation has never been properly brought to their 
minds, nor the sense of service duly stimulated. 

Two facts should be clearly taught to the youth above 



142 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

the elementary grades : first, that schools, colleges, uni- 
versities, professional schools, do not grow like trees in the 
forest, but are the results of centuries of development, 
always made possible by disinterested service and de- 
voted efforts ; that human knowledge itself is an inherit- 
ance from devoted and inspired labors, and that educa- 
tional institutions are the fruit of the loving thought of 
earlier generations for us as their posterity. Moreover, 
this idea must include the present, and embrace the work 
that goes on in every progressive community for better 
schools and general educational conditions. These facts 
are more important than half the present content of the 
curriculum, and can be dealt with in a very few hours 
every year. 

Then every youth in the ranks of higher education, — 
and higher education begins in the high school, — should 
be familiarized with the fact that he is a selected and 
privileged individual : for every boy of fifteen or sixteen 
who sits in a high school, there are several of similar age 
who are working for their daily bread; and of course 
every year of advancement increases the number who are 
shut out, and increases the degree of selectness and privi- 
lege. The high school student is ripe for the plain ethical 
suggestion that such peculiar advantages create special 
social responsibilities ; he will sit up straight and take a 
new view of life as he hears the truth set forth. It is a 
sad fact that if the educational duty of presenting these 
facts is delayed until the college years, many of the young 
people will be found already to have hardened their hearts 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL 143 

against the moral appeal. If the proper beginning has 
been made in high school years the college period offers the 
opportunity for the finest and loftiest development of a 
social spirit that may dominate the whole career, for both 
noble happiness and the richest social usefulness. 

2. Social Intelligence, Head and heart must always 
unite to make up human character : intelligence without 
goodness is a menace, and goodness without intelligence 
is blind and helpless. One of the most perplexing facts 
in history is the truth that the children of this world are 
so often wiser in their generation than the children of 
light. The need of both wisdom and goodness is most 
clearly seen in social relations, for instinct is quite un- 
able either to solve the problems involved, or to furnish 
grace to carry a solution into effect; only educated reason, 
furnished with abundant knowledge, and cultivated hu- 
man sympathy can avail here. And it is clear that 
social problems lie immediately in the path of our prog- 
ress in this day and age. While, then, in the interest 
of clearness, we shall talk of social intelligence and social 
sympathy separately, it must be remembered that the 
two must never be separated in the culture of human 
character, but must always grow side by side, in con- 
stant unity and interrelation ; only so will they coalesce 
and cooperate in perfect human life. 

First, all must possess a reasonable degree of economic 
intelligence. Money and "business" form part of all 
lives, and the most extensive and prominent part of very 
many lives; it is impossible that anyone should live well 



144 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

in modern society without a fair comprehension of the 
truth concerning these things. First comes the idea 
already suggested, of the vast difference between the 
mere getting of money and goods and the genuine earn- 
ing of money by giving a real return in valuable service 
to the community. This idea should be thoroughly ex- 
plained to the youth, and become an unforgettable and 
persistent part of his thinking. Money, he should be 
shown, is nothing more nor less than a counter or 
symbol, representing on one side human labor, and on 
the other the satisfaction of human needs ; he should see 
vividly that the production of material goods costs toil, 
struggle, exhaustion, and even bodily injury or death. 
These are facts without which no one can think clearly or 
safely on questions concerning the use and consumption 
of wealth. He should also be seized with the fact that 
money, or the things that money buys, can in a marvel- 
ous way mitigate or banish many forms of pain, sorrow, 
and trouble, especially in case of the weak and helpless, 
of widows and orphans, of the overworked and the 
underfed, of the sick and afflicted. 

The most dangerous fallacies and abuses of our own day, 
and possibly of all times, concern what is known as busi- 
ness : business, in the common sense of the term, has a 
constant tendency to run into conflict with the honor and 
truthfulness of business men, and with the health, hap- 
piness, and character of men and women and even chil- 
dren. Two great economic truths form the remedy for 
all these fallacies : first, that business exists for the sake 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL I45 

of human life, and that no human life can ever exist for 
the sake of business ; that business is accordingly justi- 
fied only as it adds to the richness and satisfaction of life. 
Second, that the interests of business itself, except when 
taken in the narrowest, most selfish, and most unintelli- 
gent sense, coincide with the interests of life in general. 
Particularly it must be shown that there is no conflict 
between moral principle and business principles: that 
while some one individual banker or grocer or contractor 
may profit for a time by dishonesty and chicanery, yet 
business as a whole, the business of the community, must 
necessarily be damaged by such methods : and that the 
business of the community can prosper only by means of 
honesty and the square deal. In other words, that many 
so-called " business methods'' are the most unbusiness- 
like in the world, leading always to loss on the whole, and 
often to fearful disaster and destruction of life and prop- 
erty. Fortunately also the business world furnishes a 
good array of disaster even to the crooked individual 
himself; and when he does come down, great is likely 
to be his fall, in this world's goods and in the more pre- 
cious things of life. 

All this means the widening of the youth's horizon on 
all questions touching the production, distribution, and 
consumption of wealth, so that he may grasp once for all 
the truth that every economic question has its ethical 
side, to neglect which is to be shallow and narrow in one's 
thinking. He is to be deeply impressed with the utter 
difference between social parasites and vampires, no 



146 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

matter what their wealth or position, who suck the life 
blood of the community without giving any benefit in 
return, and the social member who, whether humble or 
eminent, gives an honest man's service for a fair remu- 
neration. 

No argument is required for the necessity of intelligence 
concerning the rights and duties of the citizen, — what he 
may fairly expect from his government, and what he 
justly owes in civic and political duty. There is much 
reason to think that republics in general, and our own in 
particular, tend to overemphasize the rights of the citi- 
zens, at the expense of the right of the state; conse- 
quently education is called upon to do what it can to cor- 
rect this error and impress the young citizen with his 
obligations rather than his privileges. Fortunately the 
study of civics in schools is rapidly occupying the field of 
education for citizenship: no single educational move is 
at present more positively encouraging than this, and we 
may well hope for its further progress and for beneficent 
results, sorely needed, in our public affairs. 

We cannot too often remind ourselves that liberty and 
wisdom must go forward hand in hand, and that wisdom 
is not knowledge in general nor discursive erudition, but 
definite knowledge and intelligence relating to the partic- 
ular tasks to be performed. One of the most dangerous 
mistakes of educational thought and practice is the ap- 
plication of the general culture idea to the work of civic 
education : how little general culture avails against special 
training is seen in the helplessness of the average college 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL 147 

graduate in a political struggle against the generally 
ignorant but politically sophisticated "ward heeler" and 
his ilk. No valid reason can be given why the school 
should not discard a great mass of useless erudition, — 
from the first grade to the university, — in order to make 
room for an adequate training in civic knowledge and a 
political habit of mind. The greatest weakness of the 
American educated man, as a general rule, is the lack both 
of this knowledge and of the habit of turning his mind to 
the problems of what is called practical politics. 

As to the content of this civic education, any good text- 
book of school civics will give a fair idea ; with only this 
repeated suggestion, that the young citizen needs much 
preception on the duties of the citizen and rather less on 
his rights. Among other topics may be mentioned par- 
ticularly the citizen's relation to law, both as to making 
the laws through the election of representatives, and obey- 
ing the laws when made ; one cannot avoid here the bitter 
thought that the American people are charged by their 
own best authorities with being the most lawless nation in 
the civilized world. Instruction is also necessary in more 
particular public duties, such as jury service, payment 
of taxes, and then, of course, the obligations of public 
office. 

Doubtless the idea will be put down by most people 
as utterly Utopian, but we cannot pass this subject with- 
out urging the desirability of requiring a modest degree of 
civic intelligence as an absolute prerequisite to full citi- 
zenship, and especially to the exercise of the franchise. 



148 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

Only the most superficial mind fails to recognize the 
franchise as a duty and a privilege, and not as a right : 
the only rational inference is that it should be vested in 
those who are competent to exercise it wisely, and in them 
only. Certainly nothing could stimulate the study of civic 
and political affairs among the young more than the knowl- 
edge that an intelligent acquaintance with these subjects 
was the only stepping-stone to full enfranchisement and 
the ballot. Pitifully inadequate as are the existing 
statutory limitations on naturalization and the franchise, 
yet some of them may be considered as possible forecasts 
of a genuine and rational safeguarding of the fundamental 
power of republican government. 

Then perhaps it might be well for the young American, 
like the young Athenian, to be inducted into full citizen- 
ship with some solemn ceremony of initiation, and to take 
the oath of civic loyalty in some such words as the young 
Greek used: "I will never disgrace these sacred arms, 
nor desert my companion in the ranks. ... I will trans- 
mit my fatherland, not only not less, but greater and 
better, than it was transmitted to me. I will obey the 
magistrates who may at any time be in power. I will 
both observe the existing laws and those which the people 
may hereafter make, and if any person seek to annull the 
laws or to set them at nought, I will do my best to prevent 
him, and will defend them both alone and with many. 
I will honor the religion of my fathers. And to these 
things I call the Gods to witness." 

3. Love of Humankind. The greatest message of 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL 149 

Jesus and of Christianity is the supremacy of love: that 
truth has transformed our ethics and is transforming 
our morals, both individual and social. We have 
already met this element of character twice, first as the 
native tendency of affection, and then as a part of 
the ideal disposition : we might almost as well have 
treated it also under the head of habits; and we shall 
certainly meet it again as we trace the further develop- 
ment of character. It is in truth the deepest and most 
potent force in every individual character, and is the 
active principle of progress and the elevation of human 
life. All that has been discussed hitherto and all that 
may be said hereafter as to tendencies, disposition, hab- 
its, ideals, and the rest, can be of no avail if this source 
of warmth and power is neglected, — which is merely a 
commonplace way of saying what was said for all time in 
the familiar thirteenth chapter of the first epistle to the 
Corinthians. 

Yet we must not be allured by the greatness and beauty 
of love to miss its lowlier forms and ignore its common and 
everyday uses : life does not often rise to great emotional 
heights, and much of the time love is to work quietly, 
quite inconspicuously, and even unconsciously, in direct- 
ing and inspiring the plain duties and occupations of 
ordinary days. It is at all times to permeate our relations 
to all about us; and since we are never fully disjoined 
from our fellows, even when we are in the utmost solitude, 
love must never take its hand off the guidance of life. 

It is necessary that the youth — and before him the 



150 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

educator — should conceive the 'love of love' that 
Tennyson praises, — he must here, as always, admire 
before he imitates and adopts. To this end the youth 
should learn the history of the world's greatest admira- 
tions, — its devotion to men and women who greatly 
loved. Nearly every race in the world's history has had 
some one beloved hero, who won his eminence by com- 
plete devotion to the welfare of his people. Socrates 
loved Athens and its young men too well to stop teaching 
them the truth even to save his own life. The central 
distinction of the traditional King Arthur is his devotion 
to the highest good of his knights and his folk. The 
greatest world-hero came that men, — without distinc- 
tion of race, — might have lif e more abundantly. America 
is fortunate in the possession of the tender-hearted, 
sympathetic Lincoln, who loved too well to flinch from 
the bloodiest conflict, and yet could not bring his heart 
to sign the death warrants of boyish soldiers who had 
slept on duty, no matter how the military authorities 
stormed. These and others in plenty are invaluable to 
save the youth from the subtle fallacy of identifying love, 
the strongest thing in the world, with weakness, which 
above almost everything else the youth hates. Let him 
once catch full sight of love and strength, in natural union, 
and his education in both virtues is assured. 

The native tendency of affection widens in a simple and 
natural manner as the child grows into youth and man- 
hood. First he loves mother and father, brothers and 
sisters, playmates, acquaintances, friends. These are the 



THE SOCIAL IDEAL 151 

intenser individual forms of altruistic emotion. Gradu- 
ally knowledge widens ; he meets more people, and learns 
of the life and conditions of still more; with the widening 
of knowledge should come the widening of sympathy. 
Perhaps the chief auxiliary in this process is that very 
knowledge mentioned earlier, that his own deeds and 
destiny are in touch with many near and remote, and that 
he may, if he will, help or hinder, lift or thrust down, 
cause increase of joy or increase of pain. And so in a 
perfectly natural course, proceeding for the most part in 
secret and under indirect influences, the narrow, petty, 
self-centered soul of the child expands and reaches out 
to take in widening circles of friendship and acquaintance 
and interest, and still wider reaches of community, nation, 
race, and finally the whole of mankind. 

4. Courtesy : A Note by the Way. Courtesy is strictly 
not an essential of character, but an attribute of conduct. 
Yet it is so essential, both to the individual and to so- 
ciety, and it lies so close to character that we can hardly 
ignore it here. True courtesy is the appropriate mani- 
festation of right character in immediate social contact. 
Of course a man may be lacking in courtesy and yet 
possess excellent character, although good character 
tends in itself to courteous behavior; and a man may 
behave in the main according to the most exacting rules 
of courtesy, and yet be a scoundrel, although good man- 
ners tend to exercise a wholesome reflex action upon 
character. These two cases are both abnormal; the 
natural course of development is the growth of good 



152 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

character and the acquisition of habits and manners that 
show forth the good character in social relations. 

Especially do the personal ideal in all its forms, and 
social sympathy and intelligence, contribute toward the 
right basis of courtesy. Given these inner qualities, and 
all that is needed further is training in the forms of cour- 
tesy, — what we ordinarily call good manners. The teach- 
ing of manners is simply an external auxiliary and adden- 
dum to the formation of character. The subject would 
claim a far larger place in a discussion of moral training 
than it does in a study of the essentials of character. 
None of these statements is intended to belittle the 
importance of manners, indicated above, for the comfort 
and beauty of human life in social relations. 



CHAPTER IX 

Strength of Character 

i. the sources of strength 

Native vigor of impulses and desires conserved by 
education and experience, the establishment of inner 
harmony and cooperation among the powers and capaci- 
ties of the soul, the formation of a life purpose, and the 
direction of the individual life in accordance with the 
eternal principles of right that underlie human progress, 
— these are the elements of both strength and righteous- 
ness in human character. 

i. Conservation of Native Vigor. Power arises, as we 
have seen, from secret sources in body and soul, and 
manifests itself in the form of impulses, instincts, desires, 
and other original tendencies; these powers spring up 
throughout life and in all its periods, but are especially in- 
teresting and important in childhood and youth, as they 
are then the prophecy and description of life's possibilities. 
The first great maxim of education is the nurture and 
conservation of these sources of power. Repression, even 
when necessary, as it sometimes is, in itself is an evil, a 
negative and depressing factor ; it is justified only when 
the reduction and loss in the impulse repressed is more 
than recompensed by enlarged scope and prosperity in 

*53 



154 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

some other perhaps more valuable element. Only when 
a particular element threatens either some other indis- 
pensable element, or the balance and harmony of the 
whole soul, must it be pruned or eliminated. 

The main tenor of education, on the other hand, is 
stimulative, encouraging, positive. The nurture of what 
springs from the native spiritual soil is the chief and usual 
work of parent and teacher. All healthy impulses are to 
have room and opportunity; time must be found for 
every psychic process to rise into its appropriate place in 
consciousness, and fix itself through association and habit. 
The channels of energy, varied and manifold, are to be 
kept open, that the flow may augment with the growth of 
the whole organic life. 

Especially are the elementary forms of will to be cher- 
ished ; and play is the universal exercise ground for them 
all. The old education is bad education so far as it fills 
the child's life with "don'ts," and meets his abounding 
activity at every turn with prohibitions and limitations. 
Also the parental or pedagogic discipline that crushes the 
child's will instead of directing it sins against the hope of 
strength in adult character. Two types of child impul- 
sion are peculiarly liable to undue repression, the noisy 
and conspicuous, and the delicate and hidden. The tur- 
bulent impulses arouse opposition in the elders, and may 
be treated so harshly as to cause deep permanent laming 
of the will (when they are not indulged and allowed to 
choke the finer motives, — the path of wisdom here as 
always is a golden mean). The secret impulses, hidden 



STRENGTH OF CHARACTER 1 55 

by child ignorance, or by the reserve of youth, are apt to 
be trodden down unawares, through lack of that fine 
perception in the educator which looks through the con- 
cealing veil of the external, — often by virtue of his own 
experience held in memory from childhood days, or by 
grace of long and sympathetic practical study of the 
developing soul. The true educator, whether parent or 
teacher, also will not " break the bruised reed nor quench 
the smoking flax." 

For each one of the infinite variety and number of the 
tendencies of childhood and youth is a potential strand 
in the mighty fabric of that strong character in mature 
life that will stand the strains of temptation; or, to 
change the figure, it can add its quota of vital energy to 
the total that shall be available to grapple with the heavy 
tasks that enter into every life of real worth. This is the 
motive and principle of the conservation of the natural 
dynamic forces of the child and the youth. 

How these forces are to be made permanent and opera- 
tive in character we have seen in our study of disposition, 
habits, tastes, and the ideals of personal and social life. 
The value of these established parts of character depends 
in large part upon the amount of dynamic energy that has 
been saved for them and set to work through them. In 
every case of habit or ideal, there is a form of right action, 
which is one factor in the value of the habit, and there is a 
motive power of drive and force, that constitutes the other 
factor. The lapse or defect of either spells failure. 

2. Inner Harmony and Coordination. But it is a famil- 



156 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

iar fact in history and fiction and life that sometimes the 
most dynamic characters go most terribly wrong. More- 
over what we have been saying in favor of the conservation 
and nurture of the forces in childhood impulses is often 
carried to excess by parents and teachers who have 
learned only one side of the truth ; too many fall into the 
foolish fallacy of Rousseau, who to guard the native will 
of the child against parental repression tells us that we 
must " never command the child anything in the world" ! 
The truth is that there are forces in most normal children 
which if undisciplined are calculated to crush and ruin 
other elements that are indispensable to perfection, and so 
by thrusting themselves into an unjust predominance 
destroy all hope of full development. Such are anger, 
pugnacity, many forms of appetite and passion, and, later 
in life, a great variety of desires. Hence control and 
some degree of repression are absolutely demanded for the 
child's own safety and future possibilities. It goes with- 
out saying that these measures of discipline are also nec- 
essary to fit the child for his social relations both in child- 
hood and in adult life. 

The ideal here has been worked out for all time by the 
Greek thinkers on ethics and education: it is the har- 
monious development of all the powers and capacities of 
the soul. There is an inner health and balance of our 
spiritual natures that is destroyed by the exaggeration of 
any of the capacities, and consists in such culture of 
each that the totality is thereby enriched and energized. 
Now the inner life of a human being is in such intimate 



STRENGTH OF CHARACTER 1 57 

dependence upon his social life, his environment, his sta- 
tion and duty in life, that it is absurd to try to regulate his 
development entirely from within; yet something may 
be said without reserve as to the true relation of some of 
the elements of character that we have been studying. 

First, then, there is a sort of natural hierarchy or grada- 
tion of rank and authority among the elements. And 
particularly must some of them be subordinate, playing 
the part of servants and ministers, and never presume to 
the mastery. Such are the impulsive elements in general, 
along with tastes and appetites ; these under the control 
of higher powers furnish power, and enrich the content of 
life. But when a taste or an appetite or an individual 
desire becomes too strong for the rest of the character, it 
becomes a source of weakness and not of strength. Thus 
a certain amount of what is ordinarily called temper is 
an element of strength, making one capable of strenuous 
attack upon obstacles, of determined resistance to hostile 
forces, and of righteous indignation ; but if temper gets 
beyond control, its strength is weakness to the character 
as a whole. Even a good appetite is a source of power in 
life by its contribution to bodily health and to the whole- 
some pleasures of the palate; but when appetite is the 
strongest force in the conduct of life, character falls into 
ruin, and the man degenerates into the drunkard, the 
glutton, or the roue. 

We are to be masters of ourselves, as all ethical sages 
have declared ; which must mean that the higher in us is 
to be lord over the lower. That is, mere impulse and 



158 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

appetite must be less authoritative than desires, desire 
must be subject to good habits, and all these must bow be- 
fore the personal ideal, as we have sketched it. Much 
morality has tended to stop here, with the idea that if the 
personality is rightly formed the life must be completely 
right; as Polonius has it, "To thine own self be true; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not 
then be false to any man." But this is true only when we 
enlarge the idea of self to embrace the whole world, that 
is, all with whom our lives come into contact : the personal 
ideal must lose itself and be perfected in the social ideal, 
in altruism, in self-forgetfulness, in those devoted atti- 
tudes we know as family and friendly love, public spirit, 
patriotism, and finally love of all mankind. The study 
of all the greatest moral types, from Socrates down to 
Lincoln, including Jesus himself, exhibit this culmination 
of all character in love. 

This rule of the higher over the lower is often spoken of 
as the supremacy of reason; impulse and appetite are 
blind, seeing only the immediate object of desire, and 
ignoring all the rest of the world, — sacrificing one's own 
larger future good, and treading down the interests and 
happiness of others. The righteous character strives to 
perceive all the considerations that affect the case, to do 
justice to all who are concerned, and to act upon a fair 
balance of rights and interests. Thus clear vision and 
intelligence form an essential part of this subordination of 
the lower to the higher. 

3. Formation of Purposes. Character utters itself 



STRENGTH OF CHARACTER 1 59 

only in action; and the forces of character flow most 
effectively into action only when they are rallied to the 
achievement of clearly conceived and firmly held pur- 
poses running through life or considerable stretches of 
time. It cannot be denied that very many human beings, 
possibly the great majority, never form any such life 
purposes, but live a hand-to-mouth existence, doing each 
day or each week what the time seems to dictate. Still 
it remains true that such life purposes are indispensable 
to the fullest realization of human character, and are 
peculiarly marked in the strongest and most effective 
characters of history and general experience. 

What these purposes shall be is a question for the in- 
dividual himself to answer : unless he has self-reliance and 
initiative to conceive and adopt his purposes, he is not 
likely to possess the greater strength required to carry 
them out. Older persons should be chary about inter- 
ference with the formation of purposes ; only those who 
know the youth best and understand his nature and cir- 
cumstances can safely give advice even when asked; it 
is doubtful if any one ought to tender it unasked. On 
the other hand, education, both in home and in school, 
should at least be such as to open the eyes of the youth to 
the task that devolves upon him of finding or creating for 
himself an aim of life that shall be fit and worthy. 

The commonest and most definite form in which this 
question arises is in the choice of a calling. Too many 
lads stumble blindfold into an occupation; few indeed 
under present conditions can use any intelligence in the 



l6o THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

decision. Both parents and school might and doubtless 
in the near future will do much more than they do now to 
throw light upon this important problem of youth. Most 
important of all for the larger welfare is the point we have 
touched elsewhere, that every^occupation should be genu- 
ine social service, and that work should be real value given 
for the remuneration received. It is unreasonable to 
condemn this as unpractical ; for many men already fully 
recognize the truth and honestly work by it, and all men 
to a greater or less extent measure their work by the 
standard of genuine service. 

The unexpended balance of life left by the occupation 
is to be appropriated to other purposes, — worthy amuse- 
ment and recreation, intellectual pursuits, and, most im- 
portant of all, civic and social activities. All these vary 
so much with the individual that no general discussion 
can be of much value. But the wisdom with which they 
are chosen, and the authority they exert over the conduct 
of life, greatly affect both character and achievement. 

4. Concord with the Larger Purposes and Ideals of Hu- 
manity. The actual efficiency of a character depends not 
only upon its native strength and its inner harmony, but 
also upon its agreement with the trend of human progress. 
Great souls are sometimes in harmony with their own 
times and with the progress of the race; sometimes in 
harmony with the times and in conflict with world prog- 
ress; sometimes in conflict with the times and still in 
harmony with human progress ; and perhaps sometimes 
out of harmony with both. The latter cases, if such there 



STRENGTH OF CHARACTER 1 6 1 

are, can make little mark and do not find a place in his- 
tory. He who fits his time but works against progress 
will be called great in his lifetime and then sink into in- 
significance ; it is clear that the character that is to leave 
a lasting work must work in harmony with the general 
trend, whether he works with his time or against it. Ly- 
curgus, Solon, Moses, Washington, Lincoln, are illus- 
trious examples of men of character who worked with their 
times and in harmony with world progress. Napoleon is 
a striking example of one who worked with his own times, 
or at least with his own race and generation, but largely 
contrary to the general trend of human development. So 
his name grows gradually less in our esteem. Socrates 
and Jesus are perhaps the most illustrious of many 
names of those who came into violent collision with 
dominant powers of their own time, but led the race 
powerfully in its onward march. The inquisitors and 
persecutors of many times worked with their own times, 
but against world progress, and so their work availed 
nothing, even to silence the heresies of their victims. 

What is true of these great men, and vividly revealed in 
their lives, is true in its proportion of all human characters 
and lives. And in order to be in harmony with world 
progress, each man, small as well as great, must strive to 
take into his own heart and will all that he can apprehend 
of the best in human thought and aspiration, as he finds 
it in experience, in history, literature, and all forms of 
culture. Above all, he must unceasingly strive to escape 
from his narrower self, with its own individual desires and 

K 



1 62 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

ambitions, and gain insight and sympathy for the lives of 
his fellows. So may the force of his will be added to the 
great stream of human endeavor that e makes for right- 
eousness/ and his life becomes a part of the upward 
struggle of the race, the struggle that is the basic distinc- 
tion between man and the lower races of the animal 
kingdom. This union of the individual will with the will 
of mankind is the consummation of both strength and 
righteousness of character. "A man is a little thing," 
says Emerson, " whilst he works for and by himself, but 
when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, is god- 
like, his word is current in all countries; and all men, 
though his enemies, are made his friends and obey it as 
their own." 

We can only mention here the profound truth that 
so closely knit are the inner and outer sides of character, 
the individual and the social, that there can never be the 
fullest degree even of inner strength without at least the 
consciousness of harmony with the great currents of 
righteousness. Napoleon was by all accounts pitifully 
small in many of the inner elements of human nature, — 
lacking especially in the personal ideal, both as to dignity 
and honor, being an unscrupulous liar, and, according to 
very good authorities, a good deal of a buffoon. The 
fullest strength comes only when the man feels himself 
to be in harmony with the great movements of human 
life and advance. Historically this feeling has usually 
taken a religious form, and the unity has been felt and 
expressed as harmony with the will of God ; the greatest 



STRENGTH OF CHARACTER 1 63 

souls that earth has produced have had this sense of one- 
ness with the divine, and consequent harmony with the 
onward march of life. Such characters seem to be lifted 
quite above the weaknesses and failures of the ordinary 
man ; over their wills temptation has little power ; they 
stride forward in their life purposes over obstacles and 
through trial and agony. Here, again, what is writ large 
in these heroic souls is true also in modest degree of each 
life : just in proportion as we get our wills into concord 
with that great world power that makes for right and 
truth, are our own characters reenforced and energized, 
raised above the reach of petty and transitory motives, 
and made an effective part of the achievement of the 
race. 

H. THE VIRTUES OF STRENGTH 

A goodly number of admirable qualities are really forms 
of strength, or special ways in which strength shows itself 
in action. These may be considered under three heads : 
first the virtues of courage, including courage itself in the 
ordinary sense, perseverance, endurance, patience ; then 
the forms of integrity, — truthfulness, honesty, justice; and, 
finally, self-control. In all these virtues the essence lies in 
holding fast that which we have chosen to hold, in spite 
of opposition, pain, loss, and peril. Courage looks mainly 
toward the outer world; integrity is concerned more with 
conditions in the soul itself. But there is a deeper dis- 
tinction : the virtues of courage are not necessarily vir- 
tues, but are good or bad according to the cause in which 



164 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

they are enlisted ; the virtues of integrity are intrinsically 
good. 

1. The Virtues of Courage. For courage itself we may 
adopt a modified form of Plato's famous definition, and 
say it consists in daring all that ought to be dared. Mac- 
beth, guilty wretch though he was, phrased it well when 
he declared, "I dare do all that may become a man ; Who 
dares do more is none." Admirable as bravery is in almost 
any form, it becomes a true virtue only when it consists in 
pursuing or defending a truly worthy object or cause. 
Physical bravery, and some forms of spiritual courage, are 
largely a matter of native endowment ; the truer courage 
of the definition cannot be given by the hand of the most 
generous original nature, but is a resultant of the highest 
development of character as a whole. For into the de- 
cision of the causes for which we shall dare must enter 
our whole spiritual life, — tastes, personal ideals, and, 
above all, our grasp and sense of social relationships. 
It is a mere truism to say that often the bravest externally 
will fall far short when tested not merely by the visible 
boldness of his deeds, but also by the causes in whose 
service the deed was done. Too often the act that seemed 
bold was really craven, for the doer faltered from the 
support of what in his heart he knew to be highest; he 
' dared more than may become a man.' 

It is clear that education must qualify the mind of 
youth to distinguish between mere native boldness, as a 
thing to be desired indeed, but having no special moral 
merit ; and courage in wrong causes, especially in selfish 



STRENGTH OF CHARACTER 1 65 

and unsocial purposes ; and, finally, the true courage that 
stands for the defense and vindication of the best things 
in life. 

Perseverance, endurance, and patience, are all forms of 
virtue in which the force and permanence of the inner 
movements of the spirit oppose and defeat opposition and 
obstacles of all kinds. Especially must these virtues 
suffice for the conquest of toil and weariness, pain, drudg- 
ery, tedium, and, possibly most serious of all, discour- 
agement and failure. The youth must learn not to know 
when he is beaten, but to return with increased energy 
to the task. His temper, like that of steel, must grow 
with blows. Especially must he learn that certain things 
are imperative and not to be surrendered, and that of 
these he must never say "I cannot," but only, if necessary, 
"I have not yet achieved, but I am still striving." 

2. The Virtues of Integrity. Courage and its relatives 
consist in standing by our own purpose and ideals, — 
whatever they may be; integrity lies in having ideals 
that stand the most penetrating scrutiny we can give 
them, and then standing by these tested ideals. This is 
strength of character in the highest sense. The first stage 
of integrity is inward, and consists in the testing and 
ranking of ideals. Life holds out to us countless and 
varied aims and ends, all beckoning us to pursue. Impulses, 
desires, appetites, duty, love, ambitions, and whatever 
else may appeal to our wills — upon these judgments must 
be pronounced, and ranks conferred. The first integrity 
consists in clear sincerity and honesty with one- 



1 66 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

self: the putting first things first, and relegating less 
worthy to a lower place. This may seem like an intel- 
lectual process, but it sounds the very deeps of the soul, 
and its outcome is really a verdict upon the soul itself, 
and sways the balances of fate. The man of integrity is 
he who has chosen without self-deceit, and has sworn 
fealty, as it were, to what he finds most worthy. The 
experience is at bottom a religious rather than merely 
moral one, and is best illustrated by the ancient leader 
who declares, "As for me and my house, we will serve the 
Lord"; or by the alternative urged by the prophet, "If 
the Lord be God, serve Him; if Baal, then serve him." 
So in the early years of life, and especially in adolescence, 
the mind turns upon the many-hued prospect of life, and 
judges it; not in a day nor a year, even, but as time 
passes and as the spirit grows and enlarges. And the 
verdict is for integrity or against it; the conclusion is 
whole-hearted and without misgivings and reservations ; 
or it blinks some things, denies others, and indefinitely 
postpones others. 

The second step in integrity is steady and active fidelity 
to the chosen ideals, and life in accordance with them. 
Here it passes into courage in its truest form and in 
its various manifestations. The virtue of integrity par 
excellence is truthfulness, which is making our outward 
expressions and declarations a true representation of our 
inner spirits, and this quite without regard to whether the 
expression is by word or in any other form. We have 
already discussed this virtue, especially with reference to 



STRENGTH OF CHARACTER 1 67 

childhood ; what is there said all lends force to the idea that 
truthfulness as a positive virtue is really a form of 
strength. Fear and desire we found to be the great 
enemies of the truth; strength of higher elements of 
character is the only possible safeguard against these 
foes; as Richter says, "Weaklings lie, no matter how 
they may abhor it." Every lesson in truthfulness is 
really a lesson in being strong ; and every influence that 
reenf orces the higher elements of character tends to truth- 
fulness. 

Of honesty and justice little need be said, for they are 
among the oldest and most admired virtues. Their 
value lies in the resistance of desire and fear when these 
motives would lead one to trespass upon the rights of 
others. They rest first upon moral and social intelli- 
gence, by which the rights of self and others are decided ; 
and then upon strength of character to act in accordance 
with the decision. The commonest defect in these vir- 
tues is that men who would not rob a neighbor of a penny, 
will unhesitatingly plunder the state that nourished them, 
a corporation, or men and women whom they have never 
seen or at least do not know. The strength needed here 
is not only widened sympathy, but also broader percep- 
tion, to see and appreciate the situation and interests of 
those remote from us in space or social rank, whose lives 
our conduct yet influences for weal or woe. The broadest 
and most trustworthy justice is based upon the full de- 
velopment of that social intelligence and feeling spoken 
of in a previous chapter. Its extreme opposites are 



l68 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

typified by Cain's guilty question, "Am I my brother's 
keeper?" when he had just murdered the brother; or 
the heartless scorn of the rulers who had corrupted Judas, 
and mock his remorse with "What is that to us? See 
thou to that." Justice is clear vision and determined 
will to see all and act upon full consideration, even at the 
cost of private and personal comfort or profit. To it all 
the other virtues of strength minister, and for its perfec- 
tion all the elements of character must contribute ; this 
perhaps is the justification for Plato's elevating it to the 
supreme place among the virtues. 

The inner perfection of the will is self-command. By 
which we mean not merely self-restraint, the checking 
and subjugation of injurious impulses, indispensable as 
this is ; but also the higher positive virtue of self-direction, 
self-energization, self-activation. Self-restraint, or tem- 
perance in the true significance of that word, arises mainly 
through the harmonization of spiritual impulses that we 
have already discussed. Even self-restraint is really ac- 
complished not by any mere negation and quelling of the 
lower impulses, but rather by the greater force and activ- 
ity of the higher elements. Such self-restraint is the 
necessary basis for effective character, inasmuch as insub- 
ordination among the lower elements of the soul chokes 
the growth of all higher processes, and blocks the way to 
perfection. Only through self-restraint can a character 
be even safe, either toward itself or for its environ- 
ment. But the higher virtue is positive and dynamic 
self-direction. 



STRENGTH OF CHARACTER 1 69 

To receive all facts and conditions into one's intelligence, 
to hear all evidence, as it were ; to form one's own aims 
and plans, and to turn into them the power to carry them 
into effect, — this is self-command in the higher sense, 
and is the perfection or efficiency of the will as a working 
organ. It is this quality that makes leaders, whose own 
strong decision moves the wills of others as the magnet 
draws the iron. This self-command includes initiative 
and resolution and abundant force of will, to conceive 
and adopt purposes and plans, to press them through 
obstacles and opposition, and hold to them until the end. 
Of this, perhaps even more clearly than of the other vir- 
tues of strength, we perceive that it is a consummation 
of harmonious cooperation among all the forces of char- 
acter, and that its attainment is possible only through the 
broadest nurture and discipline of all powers and capac- 
ities. 



CHAPTER X 
Religion 

We have in this chapter nothing to do with dogmatism 
or theological disputation; but if any man doubt that 
religion is of the essence of human character, let him read 
again the life of Abraham Lincoln, — the most perfect 
model for American character; let him hear Lincoln 
speak under the shadow of the approaching conflict, "I 
know there is a God, and that he hates injustice and 
slavery. ... If He has a place and a work for me, — 
and I think He has, — I believe I am ready. " Or again, 
when the storm was at its worst, "If it were not for my 
firm belief in an overriding Providence, it would be diffi- 
cult for me, in the midst of such complications of affairs, 
to keep my reason on its seat. But I am confident that 
the Almighty has His plans and will work them out. . . . 
I have always taken counsel of Him, and have never 
adopted a course of proceeding without being assured, 
as far as I could be, of His approbation." As the great 
soul of the man grew under the fiery discipline of his labors 
and experience, religion became daily more and more pre- 
dominant in his thought and expressions. 

Or look for evidence into other history, and see how all 
the greatest spirits have been either actually religious 

170 



RELIGION 171 

leaders, like Moses or Mahomet, or have inclined pro- 
foundly to religious thought and feeling, as in the case of 
Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Alfred the Great, Washington, 
Gladstone. Or, best of all, let any man examine his own 
consciousness when the best thoughts and emotions rise 
to unwonted height, — when love, or compassion, self- 
sacrifice, forgiveness, benevolence, stir the soul with more 
than common power ; or, most of all, when grief or trouble 
press heavily upon the spirit; and he will find himself 
seeking instinctively for those deep experiences that make 
the essence of all religious life. 

The very word religion is an indication of the intimate 
connection between religion and conduct, for the word 
means rather scruple or conscience than any rite or cere- 
mony ; and the great definitions and formulas of various 
religions all agree in making life and action the final em- 
bodiment and evidence of genuine religious spirit. Es- 
pecially is this true of Christianity, as will appear in all 
the public discourses of Jesus, particularly the Sermon 
on the Mount and the Allegory of the Last Judgment. 

The truth is that one essential part at least of religion is 
simply the consummation of ethics ; some one has called 
religion morality touched with emotion, and the statement 
is so far true. It has also been wisely said that no virtue 
is safe that is not enthusiastic; and the enthusiasm of 
virtue is a religious passion. The growing religious tone 
in Lincoln's utterances already referred to shows how 
naturally a lofty morality under intense pressure passes 
into religious conviction and fervor. It seems clear that 



172 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

Lincoln was intellectually a thoroughgoing rationalist, 
but because life had for him so deep a meaning, and duty 
such imperative authority, when hours of darkness and 
strenuous trial came his whole consciousness became 
filled with the religious spirit. 

The union between religion and morality is so intimate 
and vital that one ought to apologize for any argument on 
the subject ; but there is real need for reminder and in- 
sistence, in this day and age, and particularly in America. 
We have created here the first great system of public 
education the world has known in which religion is not a 
part of the regular curriculum and one of the acknowledged 
means of cultivation. Our Roman Catholic fellow citizens 
naturally condemn the system unsparingly ; the rest of us 
mostly ignore the situation or take it for granted as the 
only right and proper way of conducting schools. The 
truth probably lies somewhere between the two camps- 
But the point for us here is that educational thought has 
followed educational practice, and we have gradually 
come to omit religion from our mental schemes of peda- 
gogy, and comfortably accept the serious fact that a great 
part of our youth are growing up without any education 
in religion, — or rather without any religion in their edu- 
cation. Do we so completely discredit the wisdom of 
Gladstone when he says, "It is a dangerous thing for a 
young man to start out in life without the thought of 
God"? 

That similar conditions exist or are arising in other 
countries is evident from the ejection of religion from the 



RELIGION 173 

public schools in France in 1882, the strong movement 
for nonsectarian schools in England, and the discontent 
over the existing religious instruction in Germany. The 
whole question relates to a great world movement in 
human thought and life, and its answer will not be written 
by any man or set of men, but will needs be worked out 
practically by education, the church, society, and govern- 
ments. Certainly no one who knows the public schools 
has any sympathy for the charge that they are irreligious 
or tend to irreligion ; the truth probably is that for the 
majority of American children the school is the most 
religious influence they meet. Nor can we hope, even if 
we wished, to introduce in our schools any such type of 
religious instruction as now exists in Germany and other 
European lands : we certainly cannot adopt what they 
are discarding as obsolete and ineffective. But after all 
we dare not forget that religion is an integral part of hu- 
man life and culture, and hence of education : the great 
question is, as we have hinted, not education in religion, 
but religion in education, as one of the indispensable 
agencies and resultants in the training of any human soul. 
It is with natural hesitation and misgiving that one 
approaches so difficult and disputed a question as the 
actual place of religion in character and education: we 
must, however, endeavor to outline, first some of the most 
vital elements in religion that enter essentially into char- 
acter and moral education ; and then some of the virtues 
in character that spring peculiarly from the religious 
elements. 



174 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

i. Religious Elements, Religious conceptions group 
themselves naturally about God and Man ; the thought 
of God, which is in itself religious, and the religious 
conception of Man, both work powerfully upon character. 

The thought of God, to the normal human mind, means 
chiefly two things, natural law in the universe, and 
moral law in human life and affairs. It means order 
instead of chaos, cosmic intelligence instead of the reign 
of chance, progress and uplift instead of a meaningless 
recurring cycle of change. This thought of God as the 
ground of natural law has been a loadstar for thought in 
all ages ; the mind of man has wandered away from it at 
times or in individual cases, but has as constantly come 
back to it. About it have been built the most influential 
systems of philosophy, from the days of the Greek nous 
to the modern idealistic absolute. It has been a tonic for 
intellect, and has exerted a reflex influence of stern, high 
power upon ethics and morals. It is the best safeguard 
against pessimism and despair. In all ages it has had a 
positive fascination for the minds of men ; in a word, it 
seems to rise out of the very nature of human intelligence 
and flow into health of intellect and will. 

Besides natural law, the thought of God means moral 
law. Especially in the Hebrew theology, which, refined 
and elevated in Christianity, is our religion to-day, God 
is the judge of human conduct, loving righteousness and 
hating iniquity. Hence Wordsworth's "Duty, stern 
Daughter of the Voice of God," and hence the ascription 
of the Decalogue to the very finger of Jehovah. In fact, 



RELIGION 



175 



with the Hebrews, religion and morality were one and 
inseparable, in spite of the extreme degree of symbolism 
and ceremony in their cult. Hence also the invocation of 
God in the oath to solemnize testimony and confirm ob- 
ligations. No considerable part of any race or people has 
ever got away from the conviction that righteousness and 
God are somehow one and the same; even the intellec- 
tualists for the most part agree with Arnold as to the 
real existence in the universe of a " Power, not ourselves, 
that makes for righteousness." Certainly to the common 
man, that is to the great majority of us all, the voice of 
duty and conscience is still the voice of God, and our 
wrong-doing is felt to be, like that of the Prodigal, 
c against Heaven.' 

This identification of God and moral right has sprung 
from the uttermost beginnings of the spiritual life of man, 
and has grown with his growth through ages and centuries 
of culture and mental advance; the strongest and best 
men and women of all periods have been most deeply 
imbued with it, and it has kept equal pace with the up- 
ward movements of races and peoples ; it deepens with the 
deepening of life and reaches its culmination in our in- 
dividual souls when we most fully realize the best poten- 
tialities of our nature. The strife of theologians and the 
doubts of skepticism, however honest, are merely the 
temporary aberrations of the intellectual conception of 
God, and neither indicate nor forebode any final loss of 
the real and potent sense of the Divine. 

2. The Religious Conception of Man. After the con- 



176 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

ception of the Divine itself, the most powerful thought in 
religion is the startling assertion that Man himself is akin 
to God. It would be hard to find a more utter paradox 
than this stupendous claim; yet the very religions that 
have conceived God in the most sublime and majestic 
nature, and have most emphasized the gulf between His 
perfection and man's frailty and weakness, are the ones 
that have most unequivocally declared that man is the 
Son of God, created in His image, vivified by His breath. 
One must feel that the claim itself is nothing but the voice 
of man's boundless aspiration, and that his aspiration is 
the best proof of the truth of the claim. As to character 
and its outer form, conduct, can the mind conceive any 
more potent stimulus and uplif t than a sincere and genuine 
belief that the human soul is really divine in its nature 
and possibilities ? Here then is the place of this con- 
ception as one of the essentials of character. 

The personal ideal and the social ideal, as we have 
discussed them, are matter of fact enough; yet their 
natural fruition is found in the great religious conception 
now before us. To think worthily of one's body is really, 
as the Apostle has it, to conceive it as the temple of the 
Holy Spirit ; our intellectual powers, with their clearness, 
their grasp of the illimitable universe of thought, their 
evident superiority over all the unconscious and less-con- 
scious parts of creation, are just the powers that we as- 
cribe, in fuller perfection, to God. Above all, the self- 
directing will, seeing all, weighing causes and effects, and 
choosing ends and means, is the highest attribute we can 



RELIGION 177 

think in the Divine. In both cases, moreover, there is 
one marked element in both intellectual and moral ad- 
vance that is peculiarly an evidence of the Divine, and 
peculiarly powerful as stimulus and guide : it is the great 
sense of possible further advance that seizes us with such 
power, fills our souls with inexpressible longing for more 
knowledge, deeper insight, or for purer virtue and finer 
life ; when we feel the universal aspiration voiced by the 
great Apostle when he cries ; "I count not myself to have 
apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those 
things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things 
that are before, I press toward the mark." So the per- 
sonal ideal and its correlative of self-respect find their 
natural source of power and greatness in the sense that 
our personal selves partake of the supreme essence of all 
being ; that we belong to a race that sets no bounds to its 
perfectibility, and that each one of us has a right and a 
duty to covet and strive for the loftiest personal excel- 
lence. So mere morality gets the needed touch of emo- 
tion and inspiration, and virtue takes on true enthusiasm 
— possession by the Divine. 

What is true of our hopes and obligations as to our own 
individual selves reaches a higher plane and a more nearly 
ultimate truth in our social relations. The divine nature 
of man expressed in the Fatherhood of God embraces the 
Brotherhood of Man; and all social virtues and ideals 
point and aspire to that brotherhood. Different times 
and races and individuals recognize this brotherhood in 
varied degrees ; there is a type like Cain, in the ancient 

N 



178 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

story, that would fain deny his obligation even to his 
brother according to the flesh; at the other end of the 
scale are the men to whom c nothing is alien if only it is 
human/ the Howards and Wilberforces, the men who 
have taken the world to be their parish. Between are all 
degrees of heart and opinion: most of us must plead guilty 
to much imperfection of sympathy toward those of di- 
verse color, strange creed, uncouth manners, and even op- 
posite opinions in politics or theology. Fortunately a 
limited grasp and sense of brotherhood suffices fairly well 
for the most of life in most cases. Still it remains that 
partly through want of heart, — the inhumanity of 
man to man, — and partly through lack of intelligence, 
more than half of the race do not know how the rest live 
and labor and endure; through these defects in the sense 
of brotherhood as an element of character, social welfare 
is damaged and social progress is impeded. The social 
ideal as a mere conception or sentiment avails nothing 
when a real test comes ; life demands sacrifice and 
devotion, and these spring only from a profound religious 
sense of unity with our fellow-men, 

3. Religious Virtues. All the virtues are religious 
when they rise above their lowest levels, and religion 
reenforces and vitalizes them all. But as we found 
certain virtues that lie peculiarly in strength of character, 
so we realize that some of them are specially connected 
with religious ideas and feelings. We might almost define 
religion, in the sense in which we have taken it, as a 
profound and dominating sense of two things, — first, the 



RELIGION 179 

greatness and power of the Universe of which we are but 
a tiny part, of God, Creator and Conservator of all 
things ; and second, of the priceless value and inestimable 
possibilities of man's life, — our own and that of our 
fellows, near and far. Is it not clear that this leads 
naturally to two great virtues, reverence and devotion ? 
Reverence, because of the greatness and glory of God 
and His image in humanity, and devotion, in order 
that the potential may become the actual, — in the words 
of religion, that His Kingdom may come and His Will 
be done in earth. 

Fear depresses and lames our self-respect and con- 
fidence ; conceit and vanity blind us to the worth and 
claims of others, and cut us off from full sympathy 
with them, or full realization of the sublimity of the 
Universe ; Reverence is the golden mean by which we do 
homage to the great and good without in the least losing 
our own dignity and personality. Thus it enhances 
human life as a whole, for each man gains an appreciation 
of the general worth and yet retains his self-respect ; all 
minds are elevated by a sense of the sublime in Nature 
and Providence, and are cheered and strengthened by a 
sense of kinship with all. Human society and individual 
character both need reverence if they are to approximate 
perfection. The best and strongest self-respect coexists 
with the deepest reverence, paradoxical as the statement 
may sound at first, for the capacity to respect is the same, 
whether the object of respect is self or others. 

As already indicated, we use the word devotion in 



l8o THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

the sense of profound and enthusiastic loyalty to a 
cause; that is, in an active sense involving conduct, 
and not in the sense of certain religious states of mind. In 
this sense devotion is the raising of human activity to its 
highest terms. Oriental religions have aspired to states 
in which the consciousness of the individual is rapt in move- 
less contemplation or lost by reabsorption into the spirit 
of the Universe. Western religions culminate rather in a 
state of active participation in the processes of human 
progress and development. Thus devotion becomes the 
true positive interpretation of all doctrines of self-abne- 
gation ; it is the sacrifice of the narrower self in the larger 
social spirit, the self-denial that makes each of us one with 
all and binds us into a spiritual unity. For the individual 
soul it is the merging or subordination of the lesser in the 
greater, and the full realization of self by finding one's 
good in the good of all. Devotion then is religion at work, 
or work inspired by the religious spirit. 

Here we must again defend ourselves from the charge 
of being in the clouds, — of imposing upon common life 
and ordinary characters a standard that fits only saints 
or the few rare moments of exaltation that common lives 
can boast. But here, as in some other cases, the truth that 
is most easily seen and described in heroic or sanctified 
form is valid in its due proportion for the most ordinary 
characters and the common tenor of life. The cup of cold 
water given to the thirsty neighbor at the cost of almost 
imperceptible sacrifice is the type of simple, natural, un- 
conscious kindnesses that bring their own immediate 



RELIGION l8l 

reward in spirit and character ; these quiet acts are the 
devotion of common days. They too involve the for- 
getting of self in the remembrance of others which is the 
essence of all the highest attainments of human conduct. 
Devotion to some end or ends is a mark of the strong 
character, and devotion to humane and beneficent ends 
the mark of the good ; and the most complete consecra- 
tion to the highest ends is the characteristic of the greatest 
souls. But what is characteristic of the greatest is normal 
for all: other virtues than mercy are i mightiest in the 
mighty/ and essential for all who claim humanity. Thus 
devotion is the natural consummation of the rising steps 
of human character, crowning all other elements, and 
turning the streams of power and beauty that spring 
from high individual perfection into the channels of high- 
est value and joy, both for the one soul and for all souls 
that feel its influence. It is the solution of the great 
Christian paradox that he who sets out to save his own 
life shall lose it, but he who spends his life freely, in the 
cause of right, shall most truly find it. 



CHAPTER XI 

Notes on the Cultivation of Character 

While the primary purpose of this book is a delinea- 
tion of the aim of moral education, we have naturally 
been led to many statements and implications concerning 
methods. We hope at a future time to treat this topic at 
some length ; meanwhile it may be permitted to close the 
present discussion with a few remarks upon some of the 
most salient and vital points in the question of the cul- 
tivation of character. 

i' i. The Force of Contagion. The processes of growth 
will not wait upon the educator's clock; the child's 
character goes on developing while mother and father 
are quite absorbed in other affairs ; out of school as well 
as in, on week days and Sundays, in secret ways, unper- 
ceived and unperceivable, not only by parent and teacher, 
but by the child himself. Even the crises and turning 
points may arrive and pass into permanent elements of 
character before the best vigilance can detect them. 
While we sleep the seed germinates and springs into 
flower and fruit, — and the fruit is of diverse and fate- 
ful forms. 

Moreover, all schemes for insulating the child from con- 

182 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 1 83 

tact with his environment break down. Man is a social 
being, and the young soul will find its way to others, and 
receive from them stimulus, example, suggestion, infor- 
mation, and all the contagion which out of the unformed 
virginity of child-soul breeds the fixed forms of disposi- 
tion, habit, tastes, principles, and ideals. Our children 
must needs grow up in a human, social environment ; we 
must pray 'not that they be taken out of the world, but 
only that they be kept from the evil.' The great, all-per- 
vasive, ceaseless force in education is the spiritual atmos- 
phere — first of the home, including the family circle, and 
those who enter as friends and acquaintances; later of 
the ever-widening sphere of general social life, with certain 
peculiarly potent elements, such as the church, the school, 
and the street ; and finally the great educational mills 
of ' society/ business, politics. 

Doubtless one should write not atmosphere, but atmos- 
pheres; one of the particular home, another of the imme- 
diate social circle to which the family belongs, another 
of the local community, still another of business and 
politics, — and finally the great comprehensive atmos- 
phere of the race or nation. These influences differ in- 
finitely, and may stand in bitter conflict. The forces of 
evil symbolized in the ancient litany of the Church as ' the 
world, the flesh, and the deviP still exist, and our children 
still need to be delivered from their deceits. It is not 
pessimism but plain prudence to recognize their menace 
and attack them with every lawful weapon, whether they 
appear as noxious books and newspapers, or corrupting 



184 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

plays and entertainments, or unwholesome forms of social 
life and custom. 

Even because our children now in the shelter of the home 
are so soon to be exposed to the contagion of the wider 
world, should parents, above all persons, labor for general 
moral and social uplift. Concerning proposed changes 
in our affairs we are familiar enough with the questions "Is 
it good business ? " and " Is it good politics ? " Let us ask 
also, "What is the probable effect of the movement upon 
the spiritual atmosphere that our youths and maidens 
must breathe as they step out from the doors of home ? 
Will it tend to bless or to curse childhood and youth? 
Will it increase or decrease the perils that beset young 
men and women entering upon independent careers? 
Finally, will it make better or worse the world of to-mor- 
row, in which our beloved children must live their lives ?" 
In asking such questions, and in making the answers to 
them a force in public opinion and action, parents, and 
especially fathers, ought by all considerations of interest 
and responsibility to lead the way. 

2. The Parents' Power. The home has of course a 
peculiar advantage in its first chance and its intimate 
and potent contact ; but it loses its exclusive leasehold 
on the child very early, and moreover it is at the most 
critical period of moral development that the child passes 
out of the family life into the world. It was a Hebrew 
who wrote, "Train up a child in the way he should go, 
and when he is old he will not depart from it"; if 
we desire the proverb to be true for us, we must 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 1 85 

needs emulate the faithful, potent, and protracted home 
education of the Hebrews — from which we are at present 
far removed. 

Certainly the home and its allies, the school and the 
church, should forewarn said forearm: not a few specious 
fallacies hawked by the weaklings and crooks of the moral 
world can be exposed in advance by the wise parent or 
teacher; and the child may well learn the colors and 
signs of certain moral poisons. Such instruction is 
summed up in the Hebrew sage's precept, "If sinners 
entice thee, my son, consent thou not" ; but the precept is 
of slight value unless the lad recognizes the sinners who are 
likely to entice him, and the innocent or alluring guises 
under which they conceal the evil of their counsels. 

Human nature — even good human nature — is of almost 
infinite variety ; and this is true of father and mother, and 
true of children. Consequently, as parents constantly 
tell us, what will work with one child will not with an- 
other, even in the same family. The actual concrete 
problems of home instruction and discipline are myriad, 
and their solution must be left chiefly to the fathers and 
mothers themselves. But there are some great conditions 
underlying success, and chiefly two : first, the parents 
themselves must be worthy of their trust. It is a beautiful 
and yet a terrible thing that to the dawning moral sense 
of the child, the father and mother are the absolute pat- 
tern of perfection : it is no mere accident that the uni- 
versal language of religion calls God the Father: it 
would perhaps be true to nature for the child to call his 



l86 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

father, God. Secondly, the parents must create and 
preserve mutual love and intimacy with their children. 
All this is so simple and self-evident as to be almost ab- 
surd ; and yet so it is, and it is the only way. No methods 
or devices can ever replace these two requisites. 

The reflex force of parenthood is great: no one can 
estimate how much better the world is morally because 
of children. Into the soul of the normal man or woman 
the advent of a child is a call to the higher life. The very 
way in which Nature leads the new being into the world 
seems designed, when things are as they should be, to 
stir the deepest fountains of the moral nature. Nor is 
this beneficent influence of the child confined to the par- 
ents : the very sight of children has power to soften and 
purify the countenances of men and visibly stir their 
better natures. The teacher, moreover, as a sort of 
secondary parent, is a great debtor to this reflex influence 
of education. 

Let parents then — and most parents do it — cherish 
and cultivate this divine impulse toward self-improve- 
ment : let them for their children's sake diligently prune 
away the minor vices of irritability, impatience, careless 
or profane speech, and wage a war without quarter upon 
the greater enemies of character, — vanity and insincer- 
ity, indolence and self-indulgence, avarice and overween- 
ing ambition ; and in general sound in their own souls at 
every thought of their children the great prayer-call of 
the ancient Church, "Lift up your hearts." What 
would you not give, father, to have your son and 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 187 

daughter say of you in years far hence, "My father was 
the best man I ever knew I" They will say it, and think 
it too, if you will give them any reasonable ground. 

The crown of parenthood is influence, and the spring of 
influence is love. But filial love is at first not a fact, but 
only a possibility. The love of the child for the parent 
is not born with the child, but must be cultivated by daily 
intimacy : the baby shrinks away from the father who has 
been away for a week, and clings to the nurse, unrelated 
by blood, who has tended him daily. Moreover, as the 
years go on, and the child soul grows more complex and 
more individual, expanding into the soul of the youth or 
the maiden, closeness of love and sympathy is not so easy 
to gain and keep, and is all too easily lost, — sometimes, 
alas, neither parent nor child knows exactly how or why. 
Religion teaches us that the love of the Divine Father 
precedes and engenders the love of man toward God : no 
less is it true that the love of the human parent must 
precede and engender the love of the child. 

"Who is your chum this year, Henry?" was asked of 
a boy of eighteen in high school ; he thought a moment, 
and then answered, "Why, to tell the truth, my father 
is my best chum all the time." The father is one of the 
busiest men in the city, with large affairs and heavy re- 
sponsibilities, but always with time to spend with his boys. 
He never lets them get far away from him ; with them he 
fishes and hunts; they accompany him occasionally on 
business trips; he knows what they are thinking and 
doing, and spares no pains in making himself a part of 



1 88 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

their plans and ambitions. Best of all, he is a real flesh 
and blood father, and not a creature of the writer's im- 
agination. He will never have to say, as some fathers are 
forced to, when their boys are growing into men, "I have 
no influence with my boy ; he has got clear beyond my 
control." Rather will it be true that his sons will seek 
to know his opinions and wishes, and find joy in honoring 
them in their lives and conduct. For he has solved the 
problem of influence, and knows that the secret lies in the 
maintenance of intimacy; and he has also been willing 
to pay the price of intimacy, in sharing his time and 
thought with his children, in sympathizing with their 
interests, in ministering to their happiness, and living his 
life to the highest possible degree in common with them. 

In this form the parental relation is the very type of the 
most powerful form of moral education, so far as moral 
education can come to one soul from another. The 
father and the mother incarnate the truth : and what is 
true of them is true in its measure of all who similarly 
influence the growth of the child's character. The Word 
must always be made Flesh and dwell with men : ethical 
truth must be put into daily conduct in the persons of 
men and women, and so find its way into the hearts and 
characters of the young. Only so can the light of 
righteousness be passed on from generation to genera- 
tion, and grow in brightness from age to age. 

3. Physical Health. The ancient ideal of a healthy 
soul in a healthy body has been wonderfully reaffirmed 
by the modern doctrine of the complete interrelation 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 1 89 

and interdependence of body and mind: physiology 
and psychology have united in their emphasis upon 
the truth that even the most obscure and delicate 
processes in one side of the organism have power to 
affect the other side. We must avoid indeed the false 
exaggeration that says there can be no worthy spiritual 
life in a weak or defective body : many facts refute 
that idea. But we must take constant account of 
the fact that bodily weakness and disease always 
threaten the life of the soul ; that some forms of defect 
choke or deform the mental development; and that in 
general health and vigor in body are the best possible 
foundation for a genial and abundant spiritual and in- 
tellectual life. 

Particularly has it been shown that many forms of 
bodily disorder in children check or even absolutely stop 
mental development. Such especially are adenoids and 
enlarged glands, which diminish the supply of oxygen by 
contracting the air passages, and so arrest development 
of all parts of the organic life. Intellectual development 
again may be hindered to almost any degree by defects 
of vision and hearing ; this of course is especially true of 
school work. All these facts are becoming more and 
more familiar to the general intelligent public every year, 
and great advance is being made in discovering and 
eradicating these foes of normal growth. It is not quite 
so well known that bodily defects and diseased conditions 
threaten moral development, especially in their effect 
upon disposition and habits : it cannot be doubted that 



190 THE ESSENTIALS OP CHARACTER 

many a child is irritable, moody, obstinate, subject to 
anger and other faults of childhood, as a result of indiges- 
tion, constipation, adenoids, or some other often easily 
remediable physical disorder. The preservation of bodily 
health, then, is a duty not only to body and intellect, but 
also to moral character, — in other words, to full and 
rounded development of all the powers and capacities of 
the soul. 

A word must be said about some more direct bodily 
dangers to character. The human being is endowed by 
nature with all the appetites and passions of the animal 
organism. But in so far as he is only an animal he is of 
course not man : and the only hope of true human life 
lies in the supremacy of the higher faculties over the lower 
impulses. Now failure to reach this condition may be 
due to weakness of the higher elements, or to overween- 
ing power of the lower, or, as is probably usually the 
case, to both of these conditions. It is the very nature 
of bodily appetites and passions, when over-indulged, to 
become the most greedy of tyrants, and usurp for their 
own gratification the best energy and possibilies of life : 
thus are produced gourmands, drunkards, and sensualists 
of all kinds. The new education advocates the just claims 
of the body to healthy and abundant life and development, 
for its own sake and because it is the temple and organ of 
the soul ; for this very reason the new education must also 
be peculiarly vigilant in its support of the spirit in its war 
against the unjust and pernicious attacks of " fleshly 
lusts." 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 191 

The most serious danger of this kind in civilized life is 
probably the sexual impulse : fortunately a large amount 
of earnest and expert attention is now being given to the 
problem. Already abundant sources of helpful infor- 
mation and advice have been opened up for all who will 
ask for them ; and we may well hope for great progress in 
education on this point. We content ourselves here with 
urging the matter upon the earnest attention of all parents 
and teachers, and indicating in the reading list a number 
of reliable sources of information. 

The only conclusion to the question of the relation of 
body to mind in moral development is the idea, already 
often expressed or implied, of overcoming evil by good. 
Great is the beneficent influence of abundant and healthy 
bodily life, and upon this must attention be mainly fixed, 
not upon defects and remedies. The whole regimen of 
childhood and youth must be ordered so as to guarantee 
good digestion, clean rich blood, firm muscles, and steady 
nerves, and the greatest possible strength and vigor of 
every fiber of the physical frame. To this distinctly phy- 
sical regimen needs to be added, we believe, the bodily 
ideal referred to in a previous chapter, which shall arouse 
in the child an intelligent and resolute purpose to carry 
forward the work begun by nature and the care of others, 
and to cherish and maintain the power and beauty of his 
physical being. 

4. The School. Modern society, perhaps especially in 
America, tends to make unreasonable demands upon the 
school: education so often means schooling, that people get 



192 THE .ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

to think that education all goes on in the school; the truth 
is that by far the biggest and most vital part of education 
takes place outside of the school and largely in a manner 
beyond its control. Certainly we dare not refer the task 
of character training entirely or even mainly to the school; 
there are several other powerful agencies in this field, as 
has already been suggested earlier in the chapter. 

A striking case in point may be found in recent educa- 
tional history in France : 1 in 1882 the Government abol- 
ished the religious instruction in the public schools and put 
in its place the existing moral and civic instruction. Soon 
after that the investigation of court records seemed to 
show an increase in juvenile crime, and naturally many 
persons were inclined to charge the increase to the dis- 
continuance of the religious instruction. But the school 
authorities, among other points in answer, called attention 
to the fact that in 1880 the legal restrictions upon the sale 
of alcoholic liquors were greatly relaxed, and consequently 
the consumption of liquor in France had tripled, and 
France had passed from being seventh in the list of nations 
in amount of liquor consumed to the bad eminence of 
being first ; and in 188 1 was passed a law establishing the 
"full liberty of the press," and consequently the country 
was flooded with immoral literature ; a cabinet minister 
declared in 1882 that there were distributed in Paris at 
the very doors of the schools more than 30,000 immoral 

1 Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1900-1901, p. 11 29. 
We have quoted in part almost verbatim from the American writer and 
the French authorities. 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OE CHARACTER 1 93 

papers daily. Most of us will agree with M. Buisson, of 
the Ministry of Education, that "If we must find some 
recent laws upon which to lay a part of the responsibility, 
it would suffice to cite the two laws which have given free 
scope and entire impunity, the one to the manufacture 
and sale of intoxicating drinks, the other to the cheap 
pornographic press." 

It is profoundly important that the general public 
should realize the inability of the school to cope single- 
handed with the task of creating character, or successfuly 
to counteract great forces of evil in the larger world into 
which the child is to be plunged. The limitation of school 
education in moral training rests mainly upon three con- 
ditions: the large number of pupils assigned to each 
teacher; the comparatively short hours and limited 
period of life given to school education; and the great 
burden of intellectual training that is thrust upon the 
school by the enormous content of the modern " curricu- 
lum," — a burden that has engrossed the attention and 
energy of the school almost to the exclusion of both aes- 
thetic and moral culture. While all these conditions can 
be improved by educational progress, they are partly of 
the very nature of the school, and will always forbid our 
throwing anything like the entire burden of moral educa- 
tion upon the school and the teacher. 

On the other hand it is necessary to lay great stress upon 
the real moral duty of the school, a duty which it and it 
.\lone can discharge ; for it is difficult to avoid the convic- 
tion that the school falls far short of undertaking or even 



194 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

comprehending this task. We can here only suggest 
outlines of this great subject, and must ask the con- 
siderate judgment of the reader upon so condensed an 
exposition. 

The school is essentially a mediator between the peace- 
ful seclusion and simple life of the home and the great 
wide world, with its complexity, its stress and strain, and 
its consequent infinite multiplication of hardships and 
difficulties. As the child passes from infancy by gradual 
stages up to youth, his spiritual and material life both 
pass out from the home into the world; presently he 
makes a final plunge when he leaves school and takes up 
his full adult burden of vocation and citizenship. In the 
modern world there are two chief parties holding an in- 
terest in the school, the family and the State ; both desire 
the greatest good of the child, but not in exactly the same 
manner. Both desire for him efficiency and character ; 
both therefore wish him to gain knowledge of the world, 
and to form attitudes toward it. The home can itself 
largely do the work of training disposition, and habits, and 
the personal ideal ; the school must broaden the mind of 
the child to take in the larger relationships of life ; and it 
must serve the State by molding the particular type of 
citizen required by the particular form of polity. 

For these reasons, then, and some others that need not 
enter here, the chief contribution of the school to the cul- 
tivation of character is the broadening of both intelligence 
and sympathy, and especially of the former ; moral intel 
ligence, in a word, including all the spheres of mature life, 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 1 95 

vocation, society, political activity, is the peculiar aim 
of the school, which can be attained by no other agency, 
at least so far as the great mass of the people are con- 
cerned. It need hardly be said that this does not mean 
that the school and the teacher are to neglect any other 
way whatsoever in which they can stimulate or guide the 
right growth of the child's character: the school must 
continue the work of the home in the nurture of the dis- 
position; it must maintain and extend the good habits 
that have been begun in early childhood, — obedience, 
industry, though tfulness ; it must minister to the culti- 
vation of the tastes ; and it must contribute to the up- 
building of the personal ideal, — particularly, as has been 
pointed out, the ideal of knowledge and good thinking. 
Our only contention here is that the main task of school 
education is in the higher realms of the social ideal, the 
ethical imagination, and the formation of life purposes in 
definite and rational detail. 

We need also to guard against the suspicion of advo- 
cating moral instruction as it is too often conceived 
by those who discuss it : we mean the type parodied by 
Rousseau when he says : — 

"Here is the formula to which may be reduced almost 
all the moral lessons which are given, or may be given, to 
children : — 

"Teacher: You must not do that. Child: And why 
must I not do that ? T. Because it is wrong. C Wrong ! 
What is wrong ? T. To do what is forbidden. C. What 
is the penalty for doing what is forbidden ? 2\ You will 



196 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

be punished. C. I will do it in such a way that nothing 
will be known of it. T. You will be watched. C. I will 
hide myself. T. You will be questioned. C I will lie. 
T. You must not lie. C. Why must I not lie ? T. Be- 
cause it is wrong to lie. — And so on ad infinitum. 

"This is the inevitable circle. . . ."* 

Fortunately such a travesty exists chiefly in the minds of 
those who wish, as did Rousseau, to use it as an argument. 
In any case, it has in it neither sense nor reason, and can 
find no justification in theory or experience. Moral 
education, more than any other, must use methods that 
are in harmony with the nature of the child, — provided 
only we penetrate to the true inwardness of that nature 
and refuse to be misled by the superficial and accidental. 

The great general principle of moral instruction is 
simple and incontrovertible : we must seek to stimulate 
motives rather than to communicate precepts. There 
are three arguments against the extensive use of precept : 
first, the child knows in the main without being told what 
is right and what is wrong : secondly, even when he does 
not, our telling him will not often convince him ; thirdly, 
the knowledge of right is no guarantee of its perform- 
ance. Moral instruction should concern itself mainly 
not with telling what is right, but rather with imbuing 
the mind with ideas that will make the child want to do 
the right. 

All this leads to the great truth enunciated by Herbart 
that the chief business of education is the ethical revelation 

1 Emile, p. $3 (tr. Payne, New York, 1901). 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 1 97 

of the universe} We are to present mainly facts; them 
the child cannot reject or ignore, even when he is stirred, 
as he so often is, by the impulse of capricious opposition 
or perversity. But the facts must be such and so pre- 
sented as to lead naturally to principles and ideals, and so 
to motives. They must be such as to touch the emotions 
and the will, and must be presented in such a manner and 
by such a person, as to do this part of their work effec- 
tively. Let it be noted that this proposition does not 
dream of any slightest weakening of the intellectual side 
of education, nor does it forget for one moment the abso- 
lute authority and value of abstract or intellectual truth ; 
far from that, the ethical revelation of the world will evi- 
dently need to be most scrupulous and accurate in its facts 
and in all steps of reasoning from them ; for while mere 
intellectual training tends to move no further than the 
inner consciousness of the individual, moral education 
marks its effects upon the life and destiny of the man and 
the race. 

The great need of the school with respect to moral 
education is not first the addition of separate lessons in 
morals or ethics : it is rather the general moralization of 
the curriculum, or at least of such studies as admit of this. 
Two great branches of study come to mind : history and 
literature ; to them may at once be added two others that 
attach themselves naturally to history: civics and eco- 
nomics. Space forbids any adequate discussion of this 

1 It seems fair to translate Herbart's phrase aesthetische Darstellung 
thus, in view of his identifying the aesthetic and ethical judgments. 



198 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

great problem here, and we must be content with a few 
brief assertions which in their isolation sound dogmatic, 
though they are not so intended. 1 History is devitalized 
by insistence upon " covering the ground " in the sense of 
appropriating the facts contained in a certain book or set 
of books treating a certain period. The result is first that 
most of the facts, having no hold upon the life or heart of 
the pupil, are lost in oblivion almost as soon as the final 
examination is over; and secondly, that those profound 
and indispensable ideas and images that should be im- 
pressed indelibly upon the mind, be literally learned by 
heart, and so permanently influence character, never get 
root at all. It is a fact that the great majority of Amer- 
ican college students could not cite one single idea from 
Washington's Farewell Address ; half of them do not posi- 
tively know whether or no any such address ever occurred. 
When we come to literature we find it largely dehuman- 
ized in the interests of literary history and philology; 
" Macbeth " and the " Merchant of Venice," " Cicero 
against Catiline," Schiller's "William Tell," too often 
lose their real character as a portrayal and judgment of 
life, and become mere frameworks for remote facts and 
irrelevant etymology and syntax. 

The question of separate ethical or moral lessons ought 
also to be dealt with seriously ; so far we have only played 
at it here and there, and usually ended by declaring, first, 

1 See article by the writer, "An Educational Emergency," Atlantic 
Monthly, July, 1910. Also, "The High School's Cure of Souls," Edu- 
cational Review », April, 1908. 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 1 99 

that it is not needed, and second, that no one could teach 
it successfully if it were. Of the need of all agencies that 
can contribute to the formation of character, no one who 
looks abroad into the world of society, business, and pol- 
itics, can be in doubt. The question of possibility is not 
one for argument so much as for intelligent and resolute 
experiment and reflection upon the results of the experi- 
ence. Schools both past and present in other lands fur- 
nish rich material for study, in both methods and results. 

Finally, the internal social life of the school is just 
beginning to be properly recognized as an educative 
agency of the first rank. Here we have much yet to learn : 
the school is to be a microcosm, a little world in which 
the children can learn how to live later in the big world. 
Two great principles must be preserved: first, the life 
must be real and sincere ; to the child not a preparation but 
life in earnest; then the school life must ring true to the 
virtues and ideals of all life ; probably we shall have to 
stop punishing Harry for helping Tom with his lesson, if 
we expect school life to do its part toward making the 
world less selfish. At any rate, few symptoms in educa- 
tion are more hopeful than the pervasive and vital interest 
in the social side of school training. 

5. Self-education. The deepest of all educational 
truths is that we cannot really be taught, but must 
learn: unless the mind of the pupil works there is no 
instruction, and unless the will of the pupil works there 
is no training. In the early years the teacher — official 
or unofficial — can and must do much for the learner; 



200 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

but as the years go on he can do less and less, and the 
growing soul is more and more committed to its own 
guard and culture. Moreover, man differs from all other 
animals in the long duration of his age of development : 
at an age when most creatures of his size are full 
grown he is still an almost helpless infant, and after 
they begin to be aged he is still putting forth the bud 
of new powers and capacities. Even his body requires 
a quarter of a century to reach perfection, and no one has 
yet set any limit in years to the expansion and ripen- 
ing of his soul. 

For these two reasons the greatest education must al- 
ways needs be self-education ; even the child must take 
himself in hand, or little will be accomplished ; and after 
parents and teachers have done their best, the real task 
and the choicest results lie before the maturing youth. 
Instruction and training merely make beginnings, start 
processes, stimulate motives, and provide the simplest 
tools, the finest service of the educator lies in making him- 
self no longer needed, by setting in motion the pupil's own 
self-educative will, and transferring to him the responsi- 
bility and the control of his own further cultivation. 

It is sad to think how few people ever do take them- 
selves seriously in hand to make the best, as Jean Paul 
has it, of the stuff that is in them. It is striking, on the 
other hand, how largely great men have made themselves 
and how little schools and other influences from without 
seem to have affected their development: the pages of 
biography are full of the Stephensons who did not learn 



NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION OF CHARACTER 201 

to read until they were grown men, of the Lincolns whose 
academy was the field or the village store, and of the Scotts 
who were the " great blockheads" of the schools that they 
attended. Demosthenes striding up and down the shore, 
with pebbles in his mouth, relentlessly drilling his stam- 
mering tongue to out-talk the waves themselves, is a 
type of the sort of education that removes mountains and 
turns obstacles into stepping-stones. So is Disraeli, 
laughed down in his maiden speech, vowing that the un- 
ruly House should yet listen to him and mark his words 
well. 

Self-education, then, is the consummation and fulfill- 
ment of all other training ; it is the only guarantee of any 
large realization of the hidden possibilities of the young 
soul. It is the clear duty of the educator to give delib- 
erate and earnest attention to arousing and invigorating the 
motives of self-culture ; in particular should instruction 
seek most of all to conserve native interest and intellectual 
enthusiasm ; it is far more essential that the child should 
continue to 'want to know' about things, than that he 
should know about any particular things. And discipline 
should seek to arouse motives and ideals and so constitute 
an inner moral authority that will labor for growth and 
improvement far more effectively and permanently than 
any influences from without. 

The greatest stimulus and guidance of self-culture are to 
be found in the personal and social ideals discussed in 
previous chapters. The educator can be said to have 
done his part of the work well when he has brought the 



202 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

youth to set out into life with a worthy image of what he 
desires to be, both in himself and in his relations to his 
fellow men, and with the enthusiasm and resolution 
needed to keep him at work turning the ideal into the real, 
developing character out of the endowments of nature 
through the activities of life, and again investing that 
character in good works, to the glory of God and the bless- 
ing of himself and of mankind. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Suggested Readings 

The following list of references makes no pretension to com- 
pleteness, but is simply meant to help the reader who wishes to 
study further the general subject or any particular topic. The 
general list is divided into four groups, the first including works 
that have powerfully influenced the course of educational thought 
and practice, and hence may be called prophetic ; the second class 
deals with the psychology and physiology of the child ; the third 
includes practical works for both teacher and parent; and the 
fourth group contains all that do not fit into any of the others. In 
all the lists, both the four groups of the general list, and the lists 
for the separate chapters, we have arranged the references in what 
we consider the order of their fitness and value to the reader of this 
book. 

For Reading Circles 

For Teachers' or other Reading Circles, or for any persons who 
wish to make a careful study based upon the book, the following 
books are recommended as collateral reading: Harrison, The 
Study of Child Nature ; Tanner, The Child ; McCtjnn, The 
Making of Character; Froebel, Education of Man; James, 
Talks to Teachers. 

GENERAL LIST 

/. Educational Prophecy 

Froebel : Education of Man. (Appleton.) 
Rousseau: Emile. (Appleton.) One dare not mention this 
book without cautioning the reader against its excesses and 

203 



204 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

paradoxes ; and yet whosoever would be intelligent on modern 

education must know the Emile. 
Emerson: Education. References are made to the Riverside 

Educational Monograph edition, containing several essays 

bearing on education. (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 
Plato : The Republic. (Golden Treasury edition.) (Macmillan.) 

Book II, last third (376B to end), Book III, Book VII. 

//. The Nature of the Child 

Harrison : The Study of Child-Nature. (Chicago Kindergarten 

Association.) 
Tanner: The Child. (Rand, McNally.) A good elementary 

book for the general reader. 
Hall: Youth. (Appleton.) A small volume of excerpts from 

his massive work on Adolescence. Indispensable for the 

student. To be read with some caution. 
Kirkpatrick : The Fundamentals of Child Study. (Macmillan.) 

Specially strong on native tendencies. 
Warner: The Study of Children. (Macmillan.) Largely from 

the standpoint of the physician. 
Rowe: The Physical Nature of the Child. (Macmillan.) 
Tyler : Growth and Education. (Houghton Mifflin Co.) A bio- 
logical view, with excellent practical deductions. 
Perez: The First Three Years of Childhood. (Chicago, 1885.) 

One of the earliest books on the subject, but of enduring value. 
Sully: Children's Ways. (Appleton.) A series of informal 

discussions, full of charm and suggestion. 

///. Practical Treatises 

Spencer: Education. Chapter on Moral Education. (Appleton.) 
MacCunn: The Making of Character. (Macmillan.) 
Schofield: The Springs of Character. (New York.) 
Cabot: Ethics for Children. (Houghton Mifflin Co.) A most 
useful handbook for the teacher in the elementary school. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 205 

Moral Education in Public Schools. The California Prize Essays. 
(Ginn.) 

Hyde : Practical Ethics. (Holt.) 

Fenelon : The Education of Girls. (Ginn.) An excellent little 
book, interesting and instructive, far too little known at the 
present time. 

Milton: Tractate on Education. (Macmillan.) The finest es- 
sence of English humanistic education compressed into a few 
pages by the great poet, who was, as not every one knows, 
also a schoolmaster. 

Coe : Education in Morals and Religion. (Chicago.) 

Griggs: Moral Education. (New York, 1905.) 

IV. Miscellaneous 

Davids: The Notebook of an Adopted Mother. (Dutton.) 
Above all price for those who deal with small children. Full 
of wisdom, humor, and pathos. 

James: Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on 
Some of Life's Ideals. (Holt.) 

Everett : Ethics for Young People. (Ginn.) 

Publications of the Religious Education Association (Chicago), 
especially the yearbook for 1908, on Education and the 
National Character. 

The Gulick Hygiene Series (Ginn), especially Book V, Control of 
Body and Mind. 

Bibliographies: Monroe: Bibliography of Education (Apple- 
ton) ; King : Psychology of Child Development (University of 
Chicago Press), Bibliography of children's interests, pp. 249-255 ; 
Tanner : The Child, Reading lists under each chapter ; 
Rowe : Physical Nature of the Child, pp. 188-200. 
Note : Books mentioned in the general list will be referred to as 

briefly as possible in the special lists, usually by the author's name 

alone. 



206 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

SPECIAL LISTS 

Introduction 

Froebel, Part I, Groundwork of the Whole. 
Rousseau, Preface and Book I. 
James, pp. 38-63, 91-99. 
Schofield, Chap. I. 

Fiske : Meaning of Infancy (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 
Davidson : Education of the Greek People. (Appleton.) Chap. I, 
Nature and Education. 

Chapter I. Native Tendencies 

Tanner, Chaps. XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XIX. 

MacCunn, Part I, Chaps. I, II, IV. 

Froebel, Parts I, II, III. 

Sully, VII, VIII (Fear), IV (Curiosity). 

Keatinge: Suggestion in Education. (London, 1907.) Chaps. 
VII, VIII, IX. 

Schofield, Chap. V, Character and Heredity. 

Davids, Notebook, etc., pp. 164-166; 212-215; 234-238; 240- 
243; 246-248; 252-259. 

James: Talks to Teachers, V, VI, VII, X. 

Russell : Child Observations — Imitation. (Heath.) A col- 
lection of over 1 200 cases of imitation in children, from infancy 
up to sixteen years of age. 

Dewey : How We Think. Chap. III. 

Chapter II. Treatment of Impulses 

James: Talks, etc., Ill, IV, VIII, XV. 

MacCunn, Part I, Chap. V, Development and Repression. 

Froebel, Part III, The Boyhood of Man. 

Rousseau, Books I, II. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 207 

Davidson, Education of the Greek People, Chap. L 
Emerson, pp. 9-34. 

Chapter III. Disposition 

MacCunn, Part I, Chap. III. ' 
Everett, Chaps. X, XVI, XXX. 

Chapter IV. Habits 

James: Talks, Chap. VIII. See also chapter on Habit in James' 

Psychology, Briefer Course. (Holt.) 
MacCunn, Chap. VI. 
Schopield, Chap. VI. 
Everett, Chap. XLIII. 
Oppenheim : Mental Growth and Control. (Macmillan.) Chap. 

VII. 
Dewey : How We Think. Chap. III. 
Sheldon: A Study of Habits. (Chicago, 1903.) 

Chapter V. Tastes and Appreciation 

Tanner, XVII, XVIII. 

Perez, Chap. XII. 

Sully, Chap. XI. 

Scott : Social Education. (Ginn.) Chap. XI. 

Tracy : Psychology of Childhood. (Heath.) Chaps. Ill, VI. 

Munsterberg : Principles of Art Education. 

Chapter VI. The Personal Ideal 

Hall, Chap. IX. 

MacCunn, Part III, Chap. HI. 

Rousseau, Emile, pp. 123-128; 188-191; 217-228; 244-248. 

Perez, Chap. XIII. 

Everett, Chaps. XX, XXI. 

The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius (Temple Classics), Book I. 

Smiles: Self-Help, Chap. XIII. 



208 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER 

Schofield, Chap. XII. 
Tanner, Chap. X. 

Note : The whole thought and life of the Greeks and Romans 
was imbued with this ideal of personality, and the humanists of 
the Renaissance revived the conception ; hence both classic and 
humanistic literature are rich in material on the personal ideal. 

Chapter VII. Conscience 

Sully, Chaps. IX, X. 

Perez, Chap. XIII. 

Hall, Chap. XII, pp. 356-361. 

Rousseau, pp. 208-212. 

Adler: Moral Instruction of Children. (Appleton.) Chaps. 

XI-XVII. 
Seelye : Duty. (Ginn.) 

Chapter VIII. The Social Ideal 

MacCunn, Part II, Chaps. IV, VI, VII, IX. 

Hall, Chap. IX, The Growth of Social Ideals. 

James : Talks, etc. "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," 

pp. 229-264. 
Jane Addams: Democracy and Social Ethics. (Macmillan.) 

Chap. VI. 
Scott : Social Education. (Ginn.) 

Davidson : Education of the Wage-Earner. (Ginn.) Chap. II. 
Ross : Sin and Society. 
Forbush : The Boy Problem : a Study in Social Pedagogy. (The 

Pilgrim Press.) 

Chapter IX. Strength of Character 

MacCunn, Part I, Chaps, n, V; Part II, Chap. VIII; Part IV, 
Chap. II. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 209 

Everett, Chaps. XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XXII, XXIII. 

Emerson's Essays, Self-Reliance. 

Chapter X. Religion 

Coe: Education in Religion and Morals. (Chicago, 1904.) 
Sully, Chap. VI. 

Davids, Notebook, etc. Pp. 86-90; 106-108; 190; 224-225. 
Tanner, Chap. IX. 
MacCunn, Part II, Chap. VII. 
Schofield, Chap. XIII. 

Matthew Arnold : God and the Bible. (Macmillan.) Chap. III. 
Tolstoi: Twenty- three Tales (Oxford University Press), espe- 
cially Numbers 4, 6, 7. 

Chapter XI. Cultivation of Character 

Griggs, Chap. XII. (Moral influence of the social atmosphere.) 

Jane Addams : The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. (Mac- 
millan.) 

Jane Addams: Democracy and Social Ethics. (Macmillan.) 
Chaps. Ill, VI. 

Pritchett : The Ethical Education of Public Opinion. In Pro- 
ceedings of the Religious Education Association, 1905, pp. 

47-5i. 
Dewey : The School and Society. (University of Chicago Press.) 
Briggs: School, College and Character. (Boston, 1902.) 
Spalding: Education and the Higher Life. (Chicago, 1897.) 

Chap. V. 



INDEX 



Acquisitiveness, 32. 

Activity, 40 f. ; 75. 

Adenoids, 189. 

Adolescence, 1 01 ; 132; 138; 148. 

^Esthetic education, 16; 17 f. ; 102 f. 
See also Tastes. 

Affection, as native tendency, 21. 

Aim of education, 4; 132. 

Altruism, 22; 158. 

Altruistic nature of education, 141. 

Amusements, value of simple, 52. 

Ancestor worship, 138. 

Appetite, tyranny of, 190. 

Appreciation of beauty, 102 f. 

Approbation, love of, 31. 

Art, appreciation of, 106. 

Athenian oath of initiation into citizen- 
ship, 148. 

Athletic habit, 98 ; 99. 

Athletics, in school, 101 ; 116. 

Authority, 71. 

Avocation, 160. 

Beauty, love of, 17 ; 102 f. 
Blame, 31. 

Bodily activity, 6 ; q8. 
Bodily health, 188. 
Bodily ideal, 115 f. 
Browning, on bodily vigor, 117. 
"Breaking the will," 20. 
Business, intelligence concerning, 143, 
144. 

Candy, taste for, 16. 

Character, analysis of, 42 ; cultivation 
of, Chap. XI ; essential elements of, 
2; genesis of, 1; strength of, 263. 

Cheerfulness, 45. 

Child Study, 6. 

Christianity, 171. 

Citizenship, requirement for, 147; 
initiation into, 148. 



City life and education, 79. 

Civics, ethical value of, 197 ; study of, 
146; 147. 

Civilization, tendency to bodily de- 
generacy under, 98. 

Cleanness of body, 116. 

Coddling, 24. 

Comenius, 17. 

Conscience, Chap. VII ; also 37. 

Conservation of native endowment, 
30; 50; 56; 81; 153 f. 

Considerateness, 84. 

Constructive impulse, 12. 

Contagion, education through, 15 ; 182. 

Courage, 163. 

Courtesy, 151. 

Cruelty of children, 19. 

Crusoe, boy's idea of, 134. 

Culture, aesthetic, Chap. V. 

Curiosity, 9; 11; basis of intellect, 81. 

Debt of youth, 137. 

Destructive impulse, 12. 

Development, according to fixed laws, 1. 

Devotion, 179. 

Diet, 16. 

Discipline, 14; 37; 51; 66; 67; 68; 

S 7 ; 156. 
Disease, influence of, 189. 
Disobedience, 13; 67. 
Disposition, 43; Chap. Ill; and 

habit, 58. 
Dolls, child's love for, 21. 
Drawing, free-hand, 109. 
Duty, 124; 131. See Conscience. 

Economic intelligence, 143. 
Economics, ethical value of, 197. 
Efficiency, pride in, 121. 
Emerson, 42 ; 162. 
Emotion, 59. 
Endurance, 78; 165. 



211 



212 



INDEX 



Evil, overcome through good, 22; 33; 
36; 92; 94; no; 116. 

Facts, ethical use of, 197. 

Fastidiousness, 113. 

Fear, as native tendency, 25; relation 
to obedience, 72; as enemy of truth- 
fulness, 87. 

Food, taste for wholesome, 16; 07. 

Foresight, 80. 

France, morality and the school in, 192 ; 
public schools of, 173. 

Franchise, qualification for, 147. 

Froebel, 124. 

Fur, fear of, 26. 

"Gang" impulse, 32. 

Gladstone, 100; 172. 

God, thought of, 174. 

Good humor, 47 ; 53. 

Good, overcome evil through, 22 ; 33 ; 
36; 92; 94; no; ii6.^ 

Greek ideal of harmonious develop- 
ment, 156. 

"Growing-up" impulse, 27; educa- 
tional value of, 29. 

Guilt, feeling of, 128. 

Habit, 30; and disposition, 58; for- 
mation of, 61. 
Habits, Chap. IV ; bad habits, qi. 
Happiness, as native tendency, 23. 
Harmonious development, 37; 156. 
Harmony and coordination of powers, 

iSS- 

Health and precocity, 83. 

Hebrews, religion and morality in the- 
ology of, 175. 

Herbart's doctrine of ethical presenta- 
tion, 197. 

Heroes, national, 149. 

Higher education, privilege and respon- 
sibility of, 140. 

Higher powers, control by, 157. 

History, ethical value of, 197. 

Home, first educative agency, 184. 

Home training, 69 ; 79 ; 185 f . 

Honesty, 167. 

Honor, ideal of, 118; schoolboy honor, 
119; needs enlightenment, 120. 



Hope, 45 ; 49. 

Human ideals, harmony with, 160. 

Imagination, ethical, 38 ; 159 ; in chil- 
dren, as occasion of untruths, 87. 

Imitation, 14; 28. 

Impulses, see in general Native ten- 
dencies,' Chap. I; conservation of, 
30 ; mediation of, 38. 

Individual variation, 2. 

Indulgence, 24; 34; 52; 57. 

Industry, 8 ; 61 ; 74 f . 

Influence, of parents, 187. 

Instruction, moral, 195; 198. 

Integrity, 163; 165. 

Intellectual ideal, the, 117 f. 

Jesus, 65 ; 88 ; 141 ; 158 ; 161 ; 171. 
Joy,23f.; 45 ; 50. 
Justice, 167. 

Keats, on beauty, 103. 
Kindness, 45 ; 54. 

Law, moral, 174; natural, 174. 

Leisure, employment of, 160. 

Lies, 87 f. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 54; 117; 150; 
158; 161; 170; 171. 

Literature, ethical value of, 197. 

Love, as native tendency, 21 ; expan- 
sion of, 150; of humankind, 148; 
as culmination of character, 158. 

Manners, 151. 

Maturing impulse, 27 f. 

Mediation of impulse, 38. 

Methods of moral training, Chap. XI. 

Mischief, 12. 

Modesty, 123. 

Money, intelligence concerning, 138; 

143, 
Moral instruction, 195 ; 198. 
Moral intelligence, 128; 194. 
Moral training, Chap. XL 
Morality and religion, 172. 
Mouth, impulse to put things into, 9. 
Music, 107. 

Native tendencies, Chap. I; treat- 
ment of, Chap. II. 



INDEX 



213 



Nature, love of, 103. 
New education, 5. 
Novels, 59. 

Obedience, 13; 14; 61; 63 f. 
Old education, 5. 
Organic character of child-life, 5. 
"Ought" sense of, see Conscience. 
Outdoor life, taste for, 100. 



Parent, power of, 185 f. ; social respon- 
sibility of, 184. 

Parenthood, education for, 22; reflex 
influence of, 186. 

Parents, suggestions to, 3 ; 14 ; 18 ; 20 ; 

29 ; 30 ; 31 ; 38 ; 40 ; 53 ; 56 ; 67 ; 69 ; 

71 ; 81 ; 87, 89 ; 90 ; 104 ; 106 ; no ; 

120; 129; 154; 160; 168. 
Parks and playgrounds, 105. 
Passions, tyranny of, 190. 
Patience, 163 ; 165. 
Perseverance, 78 ; 163 ; 165, 
Personal ideal, Chap. VI. 
Physical perfection, ideal of, 116. 
Pictures, use in education, 106. 
Plato, 5, 164; 168. 
Play, 8 ; 76 ; 99. 
Playgrounds and parks, 105. 
Political intelligence, 146. 
Positive vs. negative, 36; 68; 92; 154. 
Praise, love of, 31. 
Precept, weakness of, 196. 
Precocity, 82. 
Priggishness, 83. 
Processes, educative, 39. 
Prophylaxis, against bad habits, 93. 
Puberty, 32. 
Pugnacity, 19. 
Punishment, 38. 
"Puppy-love," 33. 
Purposes, as elements in strength of 

character, 159. 

Questions, children's, 11 ; 81. 



Reading, love for, 109 f. 
Reason, development of, 82 
acy of, 158. 



suprem- 



Reliability, 130. 

Religion, Chap. X. 

Religious conception of man, 175. 

Religious instruction in schools, 172 ; 

173. 
Repression in education, 35 ; 36 ; 153 ; 

156. 
Responsibility, 79, 130. 
Restlessness of child, 7 ; 102. 
Reverence, 179. 
Richter, Jean Paul, 85 ; 87. 
"Romancing" in children, 87. 
Rousseau, 2 ; 36 ; 52 ; 155 ; 195. 

Scenery, love of, 104. 

School, 69; 79; 83; 89; 101; 135; 
146 ; 191 f. 

Self-abnegation, 180. 

Self-assertion, 18 f., 37 ; 71. 

Self-command, 168. 

Self-control, 158; 163; 168. 

Self-education, 30 ; 39 ; 114 ; 199 f. 

" Self -reporting " in school, 89. 

Self-respect, 20; 114 f. 

Senses, aided by movement, 8 ; develop- 
ment of, 9. 

Sense-hunger, 9. 

Service, ideal of, 138. 

Sex nature and training, 32 ; 101 ; 191. 

Sight, development of, 10. 

Singing, 109. 

Smiles, Samuel, on bodily degeneracy, 
due to civilized life, 98. 

Social contagion, 182. ^ 

Social ideal, the, Chap. VIII. 

Social impulse, 23 ; 132. 

Social intelligence and sympathy, 143. 

Social life of school, 199. 

Social nature of man, 55 ; 133 f. 

Social relations, 124; 134. 

Social sympathy, 143. 

Socrates, 150; 158; 161. 

State and school, 194. 

Strength of character, Chap. IX. 

Suggestibility, 13 f. ; 39; 57 J 64; 78; 
86. 

"Tabula rasa" fallacy, 6. 

Tastes, 16, Chap. V. 

Teachers, suggestions for ; 14 ; 29 ; 30 ; 



214 



INDEX 



3i; 34; 35; 40; 67; 69; 71; 81; 
87; 89; 104; 106; 120; 129; 154; 

160. 
Temperance, see Self-control . 
Tendencies, native, Chap. I. 
Things, ideas of, 11. 
Thoughtf ulness, 61 ; 80 f. 
Thoughtlessness, 85. 
Touch, development of, 10. 
Toys, 76. 
Treatment of native tendencies, Chap. 

II. 
Truthfulness, 61 ; 85 f. ; 163 ; 166. 



Vanity, 114. 

Vices, petty, 29. 

Vigor, in native tendencies, 18. 

Virtues, religious, 178. 

Vocation, choice of, in ; 159. 

Wholesome tastes, 96. 

Wilfulness, 18. 

Will, development of, 64 ; elements of, 

154. 
Wordsworth, 124. 
Workman, pride of, 121 f. 



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